Poilievre the Rhetorician

 

Do others realize that Pierre Poilievre is a brilliant rhetorician? He’s better than Reagan, “the Great Communicator.” 

This is an essential talent for rea leadership and getting things done. Without it, all you are is a careerist who will follow the polls. With it, you can take popular opinion along with you.

People credit Justin Trudeau with being a great campaigner, because he has won three elections in a row. His training in acting no doubt helps; a background in acting helped Reagan, Zelensky, Pope John Paul II, Queen Elizabeth II. However, he is not a very good actor, more of a wannabe, and it tends to show. He is an actor in about the same sense Hitler was a painter.

I say Trudeau did not win those three elections so much as Tom Mulcair, Andrew Scheer, and Erin O’Toole lost them. As Peter MacKay put it, Scheer missed a shot on an empty net. And they all lost for the same reason: they abandoned principle and “moved to the centre.” They were poll-watchers.

This never works in opposition, because it is a simple matter for a government too to watch the polls. But they, unlike the opposition, can take immediate action on them, getting on the right side of every issue as it arises. All the opposition can argue, then, is that they would be more efficient or honest in doing the same thing.

Those who like the government will naturally vote for the government again, not some unknown promising to do the same thing.

Those who do not like the government will not vote for someone else promising to do the same thing.

To defeat a sitting government, you need to do what Poilievre is doing: stick to your principles, and sell them to the public. You can’t win the debate if you don’t debate. You can’t begin by conceding all the premises of the other side.