Last weekend, Chantal Hébert wrote her regular opinion piece for the Toronto Star. She was ruminating on the idea that presumed front-runner Peter MacKay’s campaign for the conservative leadership might be self-destructing. Not that MacKay was heading anywhere in particular anyway. He is hardly the saviour of Canada’s conservatives.
If you are checking with conservatives on the telephone, you can hear an audible gagging sound when you ask them about MacKay’s campaign. And it is hardly a direct reference to the Deity when you hear the person say, “Oh God.”
But Peter MacKay has been in trouble since the turn of the century when he drove the progressive conservative bus into the arms of Stephen Harper and the Alberta cowboys of the reform conservative alliance. It was hardly good intentions that finally united the right across Canada. It was more like desperation.
What is really desperate today is not MacKay. He might be Elmer MacKay’s son but even our friends in Nova Scotia wonder about Peter’s campaign this time around. They have been there before.
If you did not know that Peter is a lightweight, you have not been paying attention over the past 20 years. At least he is a married man today and we can stop making fun of the ways his lady friends embarrassed him.
And he no longer is among the privileged who have military helicopters at their beck and call.
But it is really the party committee that was making the rules for the leadership that did Peter in. They set forth the most ridiculous and short-sighted rules for the leadership campaign that were more suited to the requirements of Vladimir Putin in Russia than a democratic party. The cut-off was just the other day for their proposed $300,000 fee and 3,000 party signatures.
The right leader for the conservatives has not even surfaced yet. It is a good thing the campaign was delayed because of the coronavirus.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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