The Tyee Trolls Andrew Scheer - Episode Two, "WTF?"

Now I'm going out on a limb here to suggest The Tyee isn't fond of the Conservative leader, Andrew 'The Private Sector Months' Scheer.

Today's episode explores how so many Conservatives are bedeviled trying to figure out how the 'summer help' ever became their leader.

If you are still trying to understand why Scheer is this close to being our next PM, so are a lot of Conservatives, left scratching their heads over how he became their leader. 

It’s perhaps inevitable that any right-wing leadership contest held in 2017 would be conducted in the fetid shadow of President Donald J. Trump. Following his 2016 U.S. election victory, many Canadians assured themselves that this country was different, not likely to respond to a campaign of equal parts boorish insult, contempt for law and democracy, religious intolerance, and not-really-concealed racism. Yet it was clear that at least some of the candidates running to replace Stephen Harper as Conservative leader were intent on testing that belief.  

The long and short of the column is that the Tories went through a strenuous and unpleasant process churning the full-to-overflowing dunny until, almost overcome by the fumes, one turd emerged at the surface - Andrew Scheer. And Hercules thought he had it tough cleaning the Augean Stables.

Sent to the bottom were such stalwarts as O'Leary, Leitch, Trost, Raitt, Clement, Chong, and, of course, Bernier. Scheer had one strategic advantage, stealth.

While O’Leary mouthed off on every newscast and Leitch threw bombs all day, few were likely to think of Scheer as radical, if they thought of him at all.

But even as Leitch courted the right-wing vote at full volume, Scheer was working the same terrain more quietly. He signalled his support for the anti-abortion Campaign Life Coalition. He cited as an inspiration Canadian-born Texas senator Ted Cruz, a supporter of Trump’s border wall who wants to abolish his country’s federal education department and tax collection agency. Scheer was similarly admiring of Senator Jim DeMint, who has favoured a ban not only on gay schoolteachers but also any unmarried women “sleeping with their boyfriends.”

Denizens of the dunny fare best when they keep their mouths shut.

While privately reaching out to anti-abortion groups like Campaign Life Coalition and securing second-choice status among Trost voters, Scheer was not as vocal about his own position. As Trost put it later: “Andrew doesn’t want to be talking about [abortion], but if he was clear about this issue he probably would never have won the Conservative leadership.”

How Scheer put the boot to Maxime.

Postmedia’s Terence Corcoran, a Bernier supporter, is one of many observers who believe the Conservative convention was transformed into a land of milk and treachery. Corcoran insists Bernier was sunk by opposition from the dairy industry who saw him as a threat to supply management. Corcoran claims “fake Conservatives” recruited by dairy interests signed up to defeat the Quebec favourite.

Combined with voting irregularities (chiefly a final-ballot gap of 7,466 between the number of votes cast and the announced result — Scheer’s margin of victory was 7,049), the result left many participants with a sour taste. 

At any rate, the disappointing loss caused Bernier to spiral out of the Conservative orbit like a rogue planet, albeit one paranoid about invading aliens. He has since founded the People’s Party of Canada and made it his personal mission to make Kellie Leitch sound like Mr. Rogers. 

And Scheer? He has since gone about introducing himself to the Canadian public as a man of deeply held, extremely conservative convictions, which he frequently promises not to act upon.