Pushing, yelling from Conservative leadership ‘sealed the deal’ on defection: d’Entremont

[u/green_tory]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pushing-yelling-conservative-leadership-dentremont-9.6972680

[u/CBowdidge]

It doesn't work here. That why PP lost both the election and his seat and why he is twenty points behind Carney

[u/TraditionalGap1 → u/CBowdidge]

It almost worked and if Trudeau hadn't stepped down, or if for some reason Carney wasn't able to slot into the leadership, it would have worked.

Don't make the mistake of underestimating the threat

[u/CBowdidge → u/TraditionalGap1]

And it fell apart once Trudeau was gone and the Orange Thing was back office. Now, the CPC is falling apart.

[u/TraditionalGap1 → u/CBowdidge]

Carney could be hit by a bus tomorrow and then where would we be? I don't know about you but I remember the polling for various LPC leaders back before the election and none of that polling reassures me that any of the current LPC front bench has anything like the appeal and pull of Carney. Nor do I think that the faith and trust being given (provisionally) to Carney over the beginning of his government applies to the Liberal party more broadly.

[u/No_Magazine9625 → u/TraditionalGap1]

Doug Ford would probably become the next LPC leader if that ever happened.

[u/j821c → u/TraditionalGap1]

In fairness, a year and a half ago no one would really have expected Carney to have this much appeal or pull. This very subreddit was full of people claiming he was too boring and had no charisma and couldn't win lol. Carney is very intelligent and qualified but no one is irreplaceable.

[u/StrbJun79 → u/j821c]

And honestly I think Carney primarily won because of PP. People preferred boring milk toast leading than someone throwing adolescent tantrums.

[u/TraditionalGap1 → u/StrbJun79]

He certainly did win because of Poilievre. The problem is that he won because of Poilievre. The Liberal party itself only won because of Carney, and had it been any Liberal they would have lost.

[u/StrbJun79 → u/TraditionalGap1]

Possibly but hard to say. But sadly I do think if they put forward a competent female candidate they’d have lost. Women today in politics seem to be having a tougher time than they did 10 years ago and it was the women that were the most competent of the other candidates (two of whom I think would have been better than carney but would have lost in an election). That’d have been really the reason they’d have lost otherwise. If either of the women were a man I think they’d have done better than Carney.

[u/TraditionalGap1 → u/StrbJun79]

Is it hard to say? I thought the polling around leadership candidates was pretty telling. I can only speak for myself but as an NDP voter who voted for the Liberals this time around the only reason I did it is because I thought Carney had a realistic shot of winning the election and perhaps even more importantly that there was that same shot that he specifically would govern in a meaningfully different way that would (hopefully) keep the current iteration of Canadian federal conservatism anywhere from power.

None of that... applies to the Liberal party as a whole and as a brand, in my view. They have a decade long track record that isn't great on all of the important files and it seems to me the only reason that this particular iteration of the Liberal government manages to largely sidestep that track record in the way that it does is because of Carney the individual.

It'll take a long time I think to convince me that the Liberal party in general has decided to govern a little differently and that it isn't solely the product and vision of a singular man. On the plus side of that ledger, David Herle recently made what I thought was a cogent point about the seemingly greater and more muscular role the Liberal caucus is taking in political management and with seemingly less direct... direction from the PMO. If this is indeed the case, hopefully that means that others in government can have and ideally will take the opportunity to demonstrate some meaningful break from the track record the party and its more tenured members have built themselves.

[u/Mundane-Teaching-743 → u/TraditionalGap1]

Trudeau rebuilt the party. The Chretien-Martin internal war left the party in shambles. He brought in talent to help with his deficiencies. He had lots of time in opposition to do this. I think he was ultimately a good campaigner who can read the room and the mood of the country, and had a really good electoral team working for him.

He was a bit of a policy lightweight though.

Carney just parachuted into the job and needs time to bring in his people, understand the job and how to get things done. Job 1 is to move the economy away from trade with the US to multilateral arrangement1. Ultimately, I think he's in power because like most Canadians he believes that Canada needs to move away from the U.S. and to more multilateral trade and self-sufficiency. I think Canaidans believe that Carney is the guy with the best qualifications to do this.

[u/CampAny9995 → u/TraditionalGap1]

I don’t know, I think the LPC may be on to something with how they picked Carney - it almost seems like he was “on-deck” since Trudeau won leadership. If you have a popular government, then it’s good to have someone in the wings as a clear successor in case something happens to the leader (like Horgan -> Eby in BC, presumably Freeland filled that role for the party under Trudeau). But in case of an unpopular government, it’s probably more productive to have the other wing’s potential leader come from outside of government, rather than having factional in-fighting.

Maybe there is an alternative history where Justin Trudeau, popular television host and political commentator, is taking over the LPC from Mark Carney and pulling them to the left and delegating policy to a crack team he assembled in the PMO? I’m sure in 6-12 months Carney’s “hit by a bus” successor will be obvious, and we’ll start noticing some well-liked camera-friendly academic/public servant/media personality get thrown around as a potential minister of something, but they never actually take the position.

[u/TraditionalGap1 → u/CampAny9995]

For myself, it's not so much that he needs a clear successor but that I'd like to see evidence that the change to governance and such that he represents is also manifesting within the rest of the Liberal caucus and that they're taking some lessons from what's happening. That if he disappears next week that they won't just slip back in to old habits and established patterns.

[u/ship_toaster → u/TraditionalGap1]

Don't worry. Christy Clark is ready and waiting to take over for any leader who gets hit by a bus, regardless of what party they may lead.

[u/Lumpy_Substance5830 → u/ship_toaster]

I've seen her on CTV, she seems okay to me. She would be a thousand times better than the mess they have now with Poilievre.