The Conservatives have a knack these days in setting themselves up to fail in the next election.
Step #1: Insult the thousands of young voters and many adults who applied for the $2000 emergency funding from the government. For Scheer to imply that somehow college kids or adults laid off would decide to stay home instead of working is ludicrous. In most case this amount barely covers their rent payment, never mind college tuition and living costs. Also, it is just damn insulting.
Keep in mind Scheer is still getting his pay cheque on time and he is not out of work like so many thousands of Canadians. Mind you, many Conservatives wish he were.
Step #2. Support keeping assault style weapons in the hands of Canadians. No target shooter or hunter needs one of these. Are they fun to shoot? Yes. Do you need to own one to enjoy target shooting? No and I speak from experience.
Can you successfully hunt with a bolt action rifle? Of course, you can. You can also hunt with a bow or black powder musket for that matter. The Conservative argument to focus on the importation of illegal firearms instead of banning assault rifles has validity, but you still do not need to own an assault rifle. This is a great position for them to take in the country- but in our cities where there are so many more ridings, it is a losing proposition.
Step #3. Backing pipelines and big oil. With so many Conservative ridings in Alberta and Saskatchewan it is understandable that they want to protect the oil industry and the thousands of jobs tied to that industry. They are all in on this one even though many areas for example, the Province of Quebec are opposed to pipelines. The world will move away from oil, it already is beginning too, but the Conservatives have left themselves no room on this one.
Step #4 Have a snoozer of a leadership race that has gone on way to long and dragging it out until August just makes their leadership woes that much worse and more obvious. It was crazy to leave Scheer as the leader when a minority government was elected. They should have appointed one of several very competent MPs as interim leader.
Step 5) Not kicking Derek Sloan out of caucus and the leadership race for his comments about Dr. Tam. Scheer waited far too long to comment on this issue and with Sloan digging himself deeper and deeper into his hole every day, Scheer had plenty of time to act. That is a Liberal attack ad in the making.
If you were Trudeau’s advisors and saw his approval ratings right now what would you be telling him to do? How about advising him to find an excuse to call a snap election while Scheer is still the leader. For those who think the public will be outraged and that the media will go after Trudeau and harm his re-election chances- you can forget that thought. Where it has been done before (including by the Conservatives the outrage lasted about a week and then voters moved on to other issues.
You’re on point with every one of these comments. As a fiscal middle-aged, city-living Conservative – I’m exactly the voter they should be reaching out and recruiting. But they keep making gaffe after gaffe after gaffe in policies, personnel and vision. So much so that I would willingly vote for the Liberals led by Trudeau in spite of my natural desire to vote Conservative. And point $5 – BANG ON. I’m no politician or strategist but I would be itching to get call an election while taxpayer CERB money was flowing out of the government coffers into the hands of voters in these first four months.
Other than #3, fully agree. Even on #3, I think Tories should be pro-oil and pro-pipelines, but also focus on other sectors getting hurt and focus on the issues in all regions, not just Alberta and Saskatchewan. In those two provinces only one seat they didn’t win so almost no room for growth, but they need to hold those seats while gaining elsewhere. Most of your anti-oil and anti-pipeline types will never vote Conservative, but there are lots of people who are for oil sands development and pipelines provided there is a strong climate change action plan. Otherwise introducing a revenue neutral carbon tax and then letting market figure out the rest is both a conservative idea and would be appealing to many swing voters who want both a strong economy and action on climate change.
On Derek Sloan bang on and same with assault weapons ban. Funny in New Zealand, National Party faced same tough choice, but unlike ours, they chose to support the ban realizing they might anger some in gun lobby, but opposing it would scare off swing voters they need to win over. And with Derek Sloan, I think fact Maxime Bernier’s PPC getting only 1.6% of the popular vote shows number holding such views is pretty small and for every such voter Tories lose, they can pick up 3 centrist ones.