{"id":37067,"date":"2017-01-28T03:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-01-28T08:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37067"},"modified":"2017-01-27T09:31:08","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T14:31:08","slug":"oleary-is-not-a-maple-scented-trump-lite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/01\/28\/oleary-is-not-a-maple-scented-trump-lite\/","title":{"rendered":"O’Leary is not a maple-scented Trump-lite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> on the “appeal” of recently declared leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary to Canadian conservatives:<\/p>\n

Partly this is just human nature: we fixate on what is nearby and recent. Partly, I think, it\u2019s a convenient way for Canadians to feel superior and comfortable \u2014 \u201cat least [INSERT PROBLEM] isn\u2019t as bad as in the States.\u201d And I\u2019m convinced the same phenomenon is at play in much of the coverage of Kevin O\u2019Leary\u2019s candidacy for the Conservative leadership. He is constantly compared with Donald Trump and found much more dissimilar than similar \u2026 and yet the comparisons keep coming. He\u2019s been on TV, he\u2019s never been a politician, he\u2019s notably braggadocious; someone like that just became president, ergo it\u2019s more plausible O\u2019Leary can succeed.<\/p>\n

Succeed he might. But there are many reasons to think he won\u2019t. The votes are ranked ballots and every riding is weighted equally, which does not benefit a divisive candidate. His pitch that \u201csurfer dude\u201d Justin Trudeau is literally ruining the country will play well among a segment of the party base. But that same segment will be turned off by his stances on CBC (\u201ca premier news gathering organization\u201d), the military (\u201cthere\u2019s nothing proud about being a warrior\u201d), peacekeeping (\u201cI don\u2019t want to bomb or get involved in any campaigns \u2026 other than keeping the peace\u201d), ISIS (\u201cthe last nationality ISIS wants to put a bullet through is a Canadian\u201d), the Senate (why not sell seats for profit?), legalizing marijuana (\u201ca remarkable opportunity\u201d) \u2026 well, I\u2019ll stop. Not only is he not particularly conservative, he\u2019s well designed to drive Conservatives batty.<\/p>\n

Trump promised jobs to people who had lost them under both Democratic and Republican administrations; to the extent he violated Republican orthodoxy it was that of the elites, not of the blue-collar voters. O\u2019Leary is promising little of substance while violating various orthodoxies of the Conservative elites and base alike. Loving the military, rolling eyes at peacekeeping, loathing ISIS and CBC \u2014 these are the things that kept Conservatives warm at night when Harper was governing not very conservatively. Why would they vote against them?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A “Conservative” party led by O’Leary would take a lot of pressure off Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in the next federal election, which may indicate at least one reason why O’Leary gets as much media attention as he does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley on the “appeal” of recently declared leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary to Canadian conservatives: Partly this is just human nature: we fixate on what is nearby and recent. Partly, I think, it\u2019s a convenient way for Canadians to feel superior and comfortable \u2014 \u201cat least [INSERT PROBLEM] isn\u2019t as bad as in the States.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[431,572],"class_list":["post-37067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-conservatism","tag-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9DR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37068,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37067\/revisions\/37068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}