O'Toole for the Win

Erin O’Toole is the new leader of the Canadian Conservative Party.

Not a stunningly good choice; but then, neither was Stephen Harper in his day. I think O’Toole was the best choice in the available field. The larger issue is that the contest looked rigged from the beginning to be a coronation for Peter MacKay. Other prominent candidates backed off from a run, as if either bribed or threatened. It looked as though O’Toole was allowed to run only for the semblance of a race; a mid-tier candidate, not thought to be a serious challenger, just plausible enough. Like the Washington Generals. So it looks like a deserved kick back against the party corruption to have given him the win. And against the contest’s organizers, and against the other candidates who backed out of the race.

O’Toole was the grassroots’ way to resist the party elite.

And even if he was not top-tier, O’Toole was a better pick than MacKay; and a better pick than the other two, inexperienced candidates. MacKay has no principles; he won the old PC leadership by cutting a backroom deal, then double-crossing his benefactor within two months. He also seemed to knife Andrew Scheer in the back; somebody showed up at a Scheer event during the last election campaign with a MacKay sign. That did not feel like a voice from the crowd; MacKay had been out of politics for a while, and nobody was hankering for him to come back. It looked like a paid political stunt. And an act of disloyalty during a campaign.

After the election, MacKay sank Scheer in a press interview by saying he had “failed to score on an open net” and that his views on gay marriage and abortion “hung around his neck like a stinking albatross.” Those images are too vivid not to have been carefully scripted; and not by MacKay himself, who does not have any way with words. It looked like calculated political assassination. And not over any disagreement on policy; it looked like pure personal ambition.

Such behavior, and such politicians, ought not to be rewarded with office.

Had MacKay won, party unity would also have been hard to achieve. Scheer loyalists would have reason to hate him; and so would social conservatives, whose views he had described as “stinking.” The entire right wing of the party might rightly be alienated, as he ran as an unabashed “Red Tory.” Quebec would have been disaffected, given his lack of interest in learning French.

I can at least imagine O’Toole as prime minister; I could never imagine Scheer in the role. And the thought of MacKay in the office was disturbing. O’Toole at least has the mein of a fighter, and a military background that suits that persona. If he’s no Trump, perhaps he’s not a low card either.