When Liberals (repeatedly) fail

When a bargain-basement group of advisers and talking heads can’t make “Poilievre is courting far-right extremists group” stick, change is truly here.

The time for pleasantries and playing by established Liberal rules is over.

Erin O’Toole learned that lesson the hard way.

After rooting out the darker blue corners of the ‘Big Blue Tent,’ acquiescing on a carbon tax, and still being savaged by ruthless Liberals comms professionals and the newsrooms of the Toronto Star and CBC, what does any Canadian moderate or conservative have to gain from fighting the Liberals on their own ground?

Of late, much ink has been spilled on pointless At Issue panels, many pearls have been clutched over pro-hard-drug policies being described as ‘whacko,’ or Poilievre failing the online far-left’s Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Game, when it comes to non-existent associations with the Alex Joneses of the world, or sh*tposting meme organizations with veritable dozens of members, when the real story has been, perhaps deliberately, lost in the shuffle.

The Leader of the Official Opposition took the last true Liberal wedge, their “far-right” boogeyman, which had been polished over a decade into the sharpest prison shiv imaginable, and he stuck it into his opponent’s kneecap.

And that terrifies them.

For the last of the Trudeau true-believers, and a bargain-basement group of advisers cobbled together with duct tape from the depths of the tickle trunk, an opponent who won’t play by their rules, who won’t bow to every media astroturf job and the braying mob, is far more intimidating than any formidable deficit in the polls.

When they can’t make “Poilievre is courting far-right extremists group” stick, their power is well and truly gone.

When they can’t – once again – turn a bit of blue-collar Canadian rabble into some imagined January 6th, they have nowhere left to turn. So, it seems, they’d rather burn down the country than take their lumps like the adults in the room they’ve always claimed themselves to be; when in fact, we’ve known them to be anything but.

The same no-longer-Liberal Party bemoaning the so-called “toxic” state of Canadian politics has no one to blame but themselves for the importation of American-style culture war wedges, and the truly Orwellian abuse of state messaging, and censorship powers.

Just last week, in response to the Liberals dying on the hill of going ‘whacko’ for legalized crime and chaos in our streets, Marci Ien, Minister for Women and Gender Equality, attempted to spin the Conservative's en-masse dismissal from the House as their Opposition “Refusing to denounce Neo-Nazism.” It doesn’t get any uglier or more untrue than that.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller, in the midst of aiding in the destruction of every Canadian public service, as well as the housing supply, through record mass immigration totals even the banks are telling them to pull the emergency brake on, held a press conference bemoaning the level of discourse in the House, post-"whacko," and then proceeded to state "Pierre Poilievre? That guy's never shut his mouth in his life."

In this instance, calls of incivility have quite literally been coming from inside the House. And here’s where the Liberals are well and truly licked. Poilievre and his team understand that what’s truly “whacko” is not triggering effete commentators, or unleashing a deluge of crocodile tears in publicly-funded newsrooms or across flailing Liberals comms; “whacko” is our cities torn asunder by government heroin; mothers no longer feeling safe at their local parks with their young children; a generation of Canadians being made to Google visa requirements to the United States; 72% giving up on the prospects of ever owning a home.

The Trudeau Liberals have lasted as long as they have by fighting dirty. For the first time in a long time, big-C and small-c conservatives alike have a pugilist of their own. After all, when the damage to Canada has been this severe, when the future of a country is well and truly on the line, that’s not a popularity contest, that’s a fight in the mud.

And it’s a fight the Liberals will lose.