Dispatch from the Front Lines: Hey, Conservatives. Carney can beat you
We wonder if the people who purged Erin O'Toole are feeling the little hairs on the backs of their necks stand up.
Hey, folks. Quite the weekend. Busier weeks to come.
You know what would improve it? Our latest episode of The Line Podcast.
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And now, on with the dispatch.
Our regular podcast listeners know that your Line editors have not been shy about warning the Conservatives in recent weeks/months that the “Axe the Tax” election strategy was a dead letter.
Even if cost of living remained the mega-issue dominating Canadian politics, the carbon tax itself has been the Ghost of Elections Past for a couple months now.
This week, in which the newly minted Prime Minister Carney signed a prop effectively ending the loathed surcharge — thus totally defanging the opposition’s primary electoral pillar — proved that the Conservatives are totally fucking unprepared for that. Totally, completely, shamefully unprepared.
While we at The Line have enjoyed the darkly Orwellian vibe of Liberals trumpeting Carney for “[getting] it done,” — “it” being “ending their crowning policy achievement after nearly a decade in office,” we could hardly look away from the response. From Friday evening through early Sunday (as of this writing) the gnashing of teeth and wailing of grievances from MPs, Conservative pundits, and staffers has been a spectacle so intellectually shameless that it beggars belief. The three main issues seem to be, in order, 1. That Carney didn’t mean it when he zeroed out the carbon tax, and that he’ll suddenly bring it back later, 2. That he hasn’t given a good enough financial disclosure or put his assets into a sufficiently robust blind trust, and, 3. That he didn’t really sign an executive order when he signed the sheet of paper noting the end of the “consumer-facing” — that’s a term we’re going to hate using, by the way — carbon tax.
For our Conservative friends, and we know you’re reading, let your editors be as clear as humanly possible, since we obviously haven't been heard yet: stop fighting the last goddamn war.