You can hardly deal with 14 contenders for the Tory leadership in just one commentary. We will divide our Morning Line into two parts: The Losers and the Possibles.
THE LOSERS:
Rick Peterson, 100 to 1. There seems to be no justification for this gentleman to be leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. While he is bilingual, that by itself is not a platform. He has no political experience and that might be why he proposes a flat tax and the elimination of corporate taxes. As the saying goes: The tax man cometh.
Pierre Lemieux, 99 to 1. The former Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian military is also a former MP from the Ottawa area. He is a social conservative and is endorsed by Campaign Life. Enough said.
Deepak Obhrai, 95 to 1. The Member of Parliament from Calgary has been serving his electoral district for the past 20 years. If we could think of one possible reason for anyone outside of his riding to vote for him, we would tell you about it.
Andrew Saxton, 90 to 1. We flipped a coin between Saxton and Peterson to see who the biggest loser would be. Saxton also won because he had previously been a Member of Parliament. He has a ‘Canadian Dream’ that seems to be a ‘rags to riches’ story. But boring.
Brad Trost, 85 to 1. We used to like Saskatoon. As an M.P., Brad Trost is not a good ambassador for the city. He is a social conservative, a pro-pipeline advocate and does not think women should be allowed control of their own bodies. Just another Saskatchewan wannabe!
Steven Blaney, 55 to 1. The Quebec M.P. will come out of Quebec with a strong local vote but there is little growth for his law and order campaign outside his home province. He also wants a royal commission to go on some sort of a witch hunt to define Canadian values. It sometimes takes people more than a minute or so to figure out what a dumb idea that is.
Chris Alexander, 50 to 1. Given a smaller field of candidates, this former M.P. would get a higher number of second choice votes and make a better showing. As it is, he has been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing too often. He seems to lack political acumen.
Those are your long shots folks. What works against all of them are the rules of the voting. All electoral districts share the same voting strength and the winner needs 50 per cent plus one vote. That means that the party will have to count second, third and fourth place votes before a winner starts to emerge. It really will be the losers who are the choosers.
We will discuss the ‘Possibles’ tomorrow.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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