2022 CPC Leadership Discussion: Et tu Redeux

[Remius]

Possibly for that party as a whole ?

My take is that Max Bernier is the party. So I would think so.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

PP has an adgenda. ill defined and almost opaque... but there. My gut says so!

PP is playing a tight game, forcing JT to make the moves and leaving himself open. PP is good at messaging designed around and for social media. short, crisp and to the point.

 

[Halifax Tar]

PP is playing a tight game, forcing JT to make the moves and leaving himself open. PP is good at messaging designed around and for social media. short, crisp and to the point.

The problem for him, PP, is if he wins people are going to expect him to deliver.

 

[Good2Golf]

The problem for him, PP, is if he wins people are going to expect him to deliver.

Yeah, he doesn’t have the option of just f*cking things off like JT…

 

[Halifax Tar]

Yeah, he doesn’t have the option of just f*cking things off like JT…

He doesn't, no.

 

[Halifax Tar]

I feel like the reporter might like a do over...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1658522309374640165

 

[TacticalTea]

I feel like the reporter might like a do over...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1658522309374640165

And they wonder why people hate the media...

Also, the lady in the back is all of us listening to this

 

[Good2Golf]

Reporter: “You mean you’re saying that if they stay in jail and don’t get out on bail, they won’t commit crime?”

PP: “That’s right. Because they’ll be in jail.”

 

[OldSolduer]

Reporter: “You mean you’re saying that if they stay in jail and don’t get out on bail, they won’t commit crime?”

PP: “That’s right. Because they’ll be in jail.”

Does someone need a fish slap up side the head?

Duhhhhhhhh

 

[ArmyRick]

And they wonder why people hate the media...

Also, the lady in the back is all of us listening to this

Raquel Dancho, Conservative MP from Manitoba

 

[RangerRay]

There’s enough truth and facts out there to drive Liberals batty. Conservatives don’t need to make shit up to do so, but can’t seem to help themselves.

Opinion: An affinity for contrarianism has driven a lot of conservatives crazy. Exhibit A: Danielle Smith

It’s this detachment from reality that sets today’s conservatives apart

www.theglobeandmail.com

An affinity for contrarianism has driven a lot of conservatives crazy. Exhibit A: Danielle Smith 

ANDREW COYNE

The Globe and Mail

Published May 16, 2023
Updated 7 hours ago

It would be easy to dismiss the many odd things that come out of Danielle Smith’s mouth as the product of a disordered mind. Easy, and accurate.
The past week alone has provided several examples. Equating the vaccine-compliant majority with Hitler’s followers; suggesting police officers who enforced public-health orders should face criminal charges; calling for doctors to be removed from decision-making roles in the next pandemic, in favour of the military; all on top of her previous musings about ivermectin, the World Economic Forum, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and of course, Alberta sovereignty: she appears to have no analytical filter of any kind, but rather functions as a sort of ideological magpie, lining her nest with whatever shiny objects she happens across, without further examination.
Certainly, it is hard to see what any of this has to do with conservatism: limited government, respect for tradition, all that. Indeed, some have argued persuasively that she is not a conservative at all.
On the other hand, she is hardly alone. A lot of conservatives have made the same strange journey as Ms. Smith in recent years, and have arrived at much the same set of crackpot beliefs: anti-vax, anti-WEF, and so on. Canadian conservatives may not be as far gone as their counterparts in the United States – though distressing numbers of both think Donald Trump won the 2020 election – but it is a difference of degree, rather than kind.


This cannot be coincidental. Why have so many on the right, not to put too fine a point on it, lost their minds? What it is about conservatives these days that makes them so susceptible to insanity?
Tribalism – this is what my side believes, therefore it is what I believe – doubtless has a great deal to do with it, but it fails to explain why this particular tribe should have settled on this particular belief system. Likewise, to put it down to a desire to “own the libs” – whatever they are against I must be for – does not tell us why this must be achieved by such fantastic means. Liberals are tetchy enough to begin with; it should be possible to enrage them with the facts.
It’s this detachment from reality that sets today’s conservatives apart. The left has its share of fanatics, but they do not give the same impression of having suffered a complete psychotic break; they are doctrinaire, not deranged.
Many things have contributed to this. Liberals have for some time controlled the commanding heights of the culture – in academe, in government, in the media and the professions – to an extent that was bound to breed resentment, even if they had made some effort to hide their disdain for the hicks below. This resentment has, perhaps inevitably, become attached, not just to the keepers at the gates of knowledge, but to knowledge itself.


Add the baleful effects of social media, with its facility both for spreading lies and emboldening those who believe in them; throw in a couple of complex, easily muddied issues like climate change and the pandemic and you have a recipe for mass confusion, not to say delusion.
But there’s an additional element that I think warrants special mention. It is a distinctive feature of the conservative psyche: an ingrained oppositional mentality, a habitual, almost reflexive mistrust of whatever is conventional wisdom, a fatal weakness for the contrarian take. If the characteristic liberal facial expression is pursed-lip piety, the conservative equivalent is the knowing smirk.
A certain amount of contrarianism has much to recommend it – my business in particular is based on it – as the conventional wisdom is often wrong. It is also, it must be admitted, deeply satisfying. The discovery that “everyone else is wrong and I am right” can induce an almost narcotic-like feeling of wellbeing.
And therein lies the danger. Over time the narcotic wears off: the high requires stronger and stronger doses to sustain it. Thus, the conservative spiral of the last decade. What starts out as an enlightened skepticism of this or that shopworn liberal nostrum becomes a dogmatic insistence that all liberal nostrums must be wrong.


At length it becomes a rejection of all nostrums of any kind: anything on which there is a consensus. The more widespread a belief, and the more eminent the scholarship behind it, the more this becomes proof of its falsity. So, the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists believe the earth is warming and we caused it? What did I tell you? Groupthink!
At these higher doses the kick takes on a conspiratorial edge: I have seen through the lies others were taken in by. “They” tried to fool me, but I was wise to them. Which is how you end up with a Danielle Smith as party leader. Or a Pierre Poilievre. Or a Donald Trump.
This is the accelerant in the mix: the contrarian temptation, to which so many conservatives are so irresistibly drawn.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Be nice to have "a lot" quantified. Regardless, common sense has been in short supply all across the political spectrum for a while now.

 

[FJAG]

So I had to chuckle. My daughter, who doesn't live in Brandon anymore either but likes to keep tab on things there became outraged when a motion was brought at the Brandon School Division Board to start vetting library books to remove suspicious content - read LBGTQ.

She wrote a letter to the Board objecting and they acknowledged her, asked if they could read it out and asked her if she wanted to attend by video. She said "Yup".

Turns out they had to hold the meeting in a gymnasium because a 1,000 people wanted to attend. They didn't read out her letter because they got 289 emails of which 285 were against the motion. In the end, 6 of the Board members spoke out strongly against the motion which was defeated 6-1.

The fun part was Maxime Bernier was there and at the start was working quite hard to be visible. When it turned out that the crowd was massively against his view on life he left before the meeting was over. He's currently going full-on MAGA trying to win a by-election in Portage-Lisgar.

Good old Brandon. Conservative - yes. MAGA - no.

School board rejects book review committee

Most Brandon school board trustees rejected a request to review and ban books with LGBTQ+ content from school shelves at Tuesday evening’s marathon school board meeting. At the end of the over-six-hou...

www.brandonsun.com

 

[IKnowNothing]

Poilievre may have his work cut out.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fundamentalist-christian-movement-1.6793677

 

[Halifax Tar]

Poilievre may have his work cut out.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fundamentalist-christian-movement-1.6793677

How so ?

 

[Remius]

Poilievre may have his work cut out.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fundamentalist-christian-movement-1.6793677

There is a reason he was the only federal leader not to attend a pride event on Parliament Hill (says he was working late the night before) and why he won’t commit to attending any event.

It’s a balancing act to keep that vote…

 

[Remius]

How so ?

He needs that voting bloc.

 

[Halifax Tar]

There is a reason he was the only federal leader not to attend a pride event on Parliament Hill (says he was working late the night before) and why he won’t commit to attending any event.

It’s a balancing act to keep that vote…

His father is also Gay.

 

[Remius]

His father is also Gay.

Irrelevant. It’s a political calculation on his part not a moral one.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Irrelevant. It’s a political calculation on his part not a moral one.

lol if you say so.