Toronto Star columnist Martin Reg Cohn advises us that there will be no regicide (the act of murdering the king or leader) at the Conservative convention in London, Ontario this weekend. Darn it. He is spoiling all our fun. We were counting on Opposition Leader Timmy Hudak at least sweating about his possible ouster.
And what is wrong with dissent anyway? It is helping to turn what promised to be a really dull political event into a media circus. It is encouraging the membership to attend. It is the dream of every party treasurer to make money on policy conventions.
Anything that encourages Ontario Conservatives to think about their hopeless leadership plight is worthwhile. These people have been going around like zombies since electing Timmy leader of their party in June 2009. Sure, he has been a disaster but he is their disaster and they are trying to learn to live with it.
After all, it is not as though there was some alternative. Who else have the Tories got? There is no doubt Randy Hillier’s zany Ontario Landowners would like to see him in the driver’s seat. Those people make the Texas Tea Party look sensible.
And Timmy has already told the party what he wants them to support in the way of policy. He has published his so-called White Papers on everything except the proper way to have Conservative sex.
With Timmy, it seems that what you see is what you get. The only problem is that in the last Ontario election the voters looked at Timmy and rejected him. Despite his leading the polls when the election writ was issued, Timmy managed to convince a lot of Conservative voters that they had more important things to do than vote on election day.
Timmy did the same thing to Conservative voters as Dalton McGuinty did to Liberal voters and Andrea Horwath did to New Democrats. All three leaders bored the voters. Nobody led anyone anywhere. The platforms were predictable, the speeches put people to sleep and nobody had any useful answers to the voters’ questions. The 2011 election in Ontario resolved nothing.
And neither will the Conservative convention this weekend. They should pass a special motion of thanks though to the people presenting the motion to dump Timmy. It helped turn out the Tories!
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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