{"id":43049,"date":"2018-04-12T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T10:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43049"},"modified":"2018-04-11T22:38:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T02:38:01","slug":"bernier-was-accused-variously-of-naivete-hypocrisy-vanity-divisiveness-and-sour-grapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/04\/12\/bernier-was-accused-variously-of-naivete-hypocrisy-vanity-divisiveness-and-sour-grapes\/","title":{"rendered":"“Bernier was accused, variously, of naivete, hypocrisy, vanity, divisiveness and sour grapes”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Coyne<\/a> covers the “revelations” (that anybody who’d been paying attention already knew) about how the federal Conservative leadership race was won and lost from Maxime Bernier’s upcoming book, Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You would think this would be something of a scandal. The leadership race was hijacked by members of a vested interest who not only had no prior involvement with the party, but most likely wished it ill: what in civilized countries are called \u201centryists.\u201d The winner of the race, the party\u2019s current leader, sold himself and the party, not just to the highest bidder, but to a particularly venal bidder at that, with a direct financial interest in the outcome.<\/p>\n

The result was to leave the party hitched to what is widely acknowledged as an indefensible policy, one that takes food off the table of the country\u2019s poorest families for the benefit of a dwindling number of wealthy quota-owners. That the policy \u2014 combining internal supply quotas, sky-high external tariffs, and heavy doses of government regulation \u2014 makes a mockery of every principle for which the party allegedly stands is probably worth mentioning as well.<\/p>\n

So naturally the response of party supporters, on being lately reminded of all this, was fury \u2026 at the guy who pointed it out.<\/p>\n

That would be Bernier. In his forthcoming book, the plangently titled Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada<\/em>, a chapter of which was released this week, the former industry minister recalls how Scheer\u2019s campaign courted the dairy industry\u2019s \u201cfake Conservatives,\u201d who were \u201conly interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges.\u201d He notes the ballooning of party membership in Quebec just before the vote, from 6,000 to 16,000, and its collapse back to 6,000 shortly afterward.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s about it. He does not attribute his defeat solely to his stand on supply management: indeed he thinks he won more votes than he lost over it. Neither does he question the legitimacy of Scheer\u2019s victory \u2014 indeed he acknowledges that Scheer\u2019s tactic is \u201cfair game in a democratic system.\u201d He merely points out that this sort of squalid trading of votes for favours is \u201cwhy so many people are so cynical about politics.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Coyne covers the “revelations” (that anybody who’d been paying attention already knew) about how the federal Conservative leadership race was won and lost from Maxime Bernier’s upcoming book, Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada. You would think this would be something of a scandal. The leadership race was hijacked by members of a […]<\/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":[32,6,53],"tags":[1130,431,188,549,113,890],"class_list":["post-43049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-andrewscheer","tag-conservatism","tag-electionwatch","tag-maximebernier","tag-quebec","tag-supplymanagement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bcl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43049","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=43049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43050,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43049\/revisions\/43050"}],"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=43049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}