Roundup: The O’Toole victory post-mortems

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Now that Erin O’Toole has been “decisively” declared the winner of the Conservative leadership contest, all of the analysis has churned out. While O’Toole avoided the media (he’ll have a press conference today instead) and got to work with meetings to solidify his transition to leader, including changes to senior staff, but had a call with the PM, wherein O’Toole was sure to point out in his readout that he raised “western alienation” as a concern he wanted addressed in the Throne Speech – sending a signal to his base on day one.

Here is a reminder of the things that O’Toole promised during his leadership campaign – and caution, a lot of those promises are premised on some eye-popping economic illiteracy. Here are five ridings whose results help tell the story of O’Toole’s rise using the rules of the campaign (you can find the full riding-by-riding breakdown here). Here’s an analysis of who the power players are in O’Toole’s Conservative Party.  Here’s a look into Leslyn Lewis’ campaign and what it signals, but I would put a word of caution for those who insist that this is some kind of turning point for a party that tends to favour old straight white men at all levels – I did notice over the past few months that whenever certain Conservative voters would harass female academics on social media and were called out for it, they would insist they weren’t sexist because they were voting for “a black woman to become prime minister.” I have a sneaking suspicion that Lewis has given a certain amount of cover to these kinds of people, which isn’t really a sign of progress.

Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt lists the things O’Toole will need to address before the party will be ready for an election, which means biding their time. Heather Scoffield sees an opportunity for O’Toole to exploit when it comes to fiscal policy. Aaron Wherry wonders how O’Toole will differentiate himself as leader given the party’s approach to issues. Éric Grenier crunches the numbers to show how the social conservative vote benefitted O’Toole over Peter MacKay. And Paul Wells takes stock of O’Toole, finding him to be little more than a warmed-over Scheer in an era where the political centre in the country has shifted from where the Conservatives believe it to be, which will mean that O’Toole will need to think bigger than he currently seems to have an interest in.

Good reads:

  • Gun control measures that the government passed last year may not get implemented until 2022 because the RCMP needs to modernise its IT systems.
  • The WTO has once again sided with Canada on the softwood lumber issue with the US, not that this will change their behaviour.
  • Alberta may have been harder hit economically by the pandemic because it exacerbated its economic downturn driven by low oil prices.
  • Here is an attempt to divine how Chrystia Freeland may operate as finance minister based on her journalistic history.
  • Anonymous Liberals courageously decry the treatment Bill Morneau received when it came to the parade of leaks that precipitated his departure.
  • Kevin Carmichael looks into the Bank of Canada’s ongoing mandate review, given how they are operating in the pandemic context.

Odds and ends:

My latest video for Loonie Politics discusses our strange notions about what qualifies one to be a Cabinet minister.

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One thought on “Roundup: The O’Toole victory post-mortems”

  1. He’s just Scheer with the Irish gift of gab, or “blarney” which is an old Gaelic word for bovine excrement. It doesn’t matter who represents them as Harper’s stooge, the Tea Party wingnuts are the ones pulling the strings. From what it looks like, the Liberals are keenly aware of this and intend to hammer him hard over it, regardless of the media’s wishful thinking that he can make a credible “pivot.” Not that they won’t try to help him, though. As for Lewis, it’s the same bad-faith attacks Republicans make against Democrats who decry the likes of Nikki Haley or even Kanye West. Personnel is policy and there’s more to representation than what gets cynically denounced as “identity politics.” Trump made a phony appeal to the LGBTQ+ community as a cudgel to whack at Muslims, then hired Pence. The CPC is just the branch plant of the GOP, as evidenced even further by Kenney the zealot being O’Toole’s Svengali. None of these people are fit to govern. Not in the least.

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