Anger and hate didn’t work, Trump couldn’t hang it all on Sleepy Joe
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre can imitate Trumpian politics to his heart’s content. But that is old, tired, and empty politics.
Excerpted from The Hill Times OPINION | BY MICHAEL HARRIS | November 14, 2022 (click Michael Harris to find article on Hill Times website)
‘The way Pierre Poilievre tells it, everything in Canada is broken. And Justin Trudeau is to blame.
As a political strategy, that might work with members of the Flat Earth Society, or those who think Elvis is still in the building. Regular people know that when a politician tells them the sky is falling, particularly in a country as blessed as this one, it just means he is tired of being in opposition, and would rather have the Big Office.
Understood. Losing is no fun, especially in politics. And the Conservative Party of Canada has had its share of losing in the last three elections. But Poilievre’s modus operandi amounts to the same simple-minded schtick that Donald Trump resorted to in the run-up to the U.S. mid-term elections; and for that matter, when he ran for president back in 2016. The new CPC leader should reflect on the results.
Poilievre can imitate Trumpian politics to his heart’s content. He can try to turn the Freedom Convoy into a moderate “Canadian” event. He can beat the dead horse that vaccine mandates were somehow an attack on civil liberties, rather than a life-saving public policy. He can ignore and demonize the national press. He can defy medical experts on how to handle a resurgence of the pandemic. And he can even claim that everything will be better if only Canadians dump the cause all the distress and dysfunction—Justin Trudeau.
That is old, tired, and empty politics. It is contemptuous of thinking people. It didn’t work in the U.S. and it won’t work here. Canadians would rather have something to vote for, not just against. And on that score, Poilievre’s proposals sound like a recording from Harper times.
The GOP is not the only political party that needs to take a good hard look in the mirror.’
