As a Loonie Politics Political Columnist Type Person, I would like to use the platform I have been afforded to recognize a constituency that is well known and well respected by all, but doesn't get nearly enough credit from the political class. They may not be "high profile". They may not have a "buzz" around them. They prefer to dig in their gardens and wear those canvas hats with the wide floppy brims and a piece of string for a chin strap. But without these fine folks the province would have been lost to the ravages of extremism long ago.
I speak, of course, of those stalwarts who have stuck with the PCs in good times and bad. You know they have been, because they tell you, often, how many years they've been doing it for.
They might tell you that they cast a ballot for Sir James Whitney after being moved by his passionate denunciations of the Mowat administration's rampant pork-barreling, and you might believe them. When Bill Davis blew up the party by funding Catholic schools, they resolutely marched to the polls, braving screaming crowds hurling religious abuse while U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" played in the background on repeat. When Mike Harris murdered Dudley George in cold blood and subjected the town of Walkerton to pestilence and plague, they blamed Bob Rae and the previous NDP government. When the chuckleheads doing Tim Hudak's advance work in 2014 didn't bother to get a permit to film a video on the TTC and Tim looked like a doofus… ehhhh… they had second thoughts.
These people have been STUPIDLY loyal (emphasis mine). They may not have liked everything about Doug Ford, or even anything about Doug Ford, but the Liberals had made a real mess of things and after 16 years it was time for a change. They would have preferred Patrick Brown, or Christine Elliott, or even a stick dipped in blue paint, but going into the 2018 election, it was what it was.
Now, however, they're getting a little worried about the way things are being handled down at Queen's Park. They don't want to say anything, but… of course there were going to have to be SOME cuts. They just didn't expect that anyone would get UPSET about the cuts. And who could have predicted that a member of the Ford family would surround himself with loyalists instead of taking the advice of seasoned political veterans?
Meanwhile, the Liberals may have been downgraded from the Minivan Party to the Sedan Party after their two Ottawa members quit, but even so they're still reaching for the stars by trying to draft astronaut Chris Hadfield, or perhaps just Hadfield's mustache, to run for Liberal leader. Another household name that could add some sizzle to the Liberal steak while tossing some red meat to their base is Jack "Kiefer Sutherland" Bauer, who laid one of the all-time-great burns in Canadian political history on Doug Ford when he quoted some American Senator guy from 1988 and said, "I knew Tommy Douglas and you, sir, are no Tommy Douglas." Ouuuch! Do you need some waterboarding after that burn, Doug, just like the terrorists that Kiefer Sutherland used to waterboard on the popular TV show "24" which I am referencing right now?
Anyway, these traditional PC voters are right to be concerned about the fact that the Liberals aren't just drying up and blowing away forever. When the PC's got back into government, it was supposed to be just like it was back in the good old Big Blue Machine days, where there was no possibility that another party could win an election. If the party has to actually work to win the next election, it'll be because of distractions like reports of MPP's being berated to the point of tears in public, Randy Hillier and Dean French fighting like an old married couple, or the Premier being booed at the Raptors parade by people who just fled a shooting.
Unlike the Liberals, however, these traditional PC's have been making their voices heard, which is why Ford managed to get back to what his base really wants from him: triggering the left by marching in a Pride Parade.
Photo Credit: Toronto Star
Written by Josh Lieblein
