Please Advise! Are Conservatives Turning on Poilievre?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recently gave an interview to media channel Northern Perspective in which he criticized RCMP leadership as “despicable” and suggested former prime minister Justin Trudeau should probably have been jailed for his role in the SNC-Lavalin affair and taking a free vacation from the Aga Khan.

In response former Stephen Harper aide Dimitri Soudas wrote a Toronto Star column attacking Poilievre's leadership style, saying that in the last federal election Canadian voters did not reject the Conservatives, but just Poilievre.

Is this the beginning of a rebellion within the Conservative party, Dr. Steve?

Signed,

Danton

Dear Dan,

Poor Poilievre. Since the election, he has tried so hard to be good. He would be different. He would show the nation a New Pierre, dignified rather than dickish, a PM instead of a prick.

Poilievre was like a bratty child who has been promised ice cream if he will only behave at the garden party — he can already taste that cone, maybe butterscotch ripple with rocky road... and then there appears, like a beribboned gift from Satan, a mud puddle. Soon little children in mud-splattered party dresses are wailing piteously and being comforted with ice cream, ice cream that our young miscreant will never taste.

Well, is anyone really surprised? Can a leopard change its thoughts? Can a hyena use a salad fork? Can Kristi Noem pronounce “guacamole”?

Poilievre's mud puddle was his interview with Northern Perspective. One of their recent videos was titled “CBC Calls Us a ‘Crazy Right-Wing YouTube Channel.’”

Safe among friends, Poilievre relaxed and splashed about in the mud. He claimed that Trudeau's transgressions “would normally have led to criminal charges, but of course the RCMP covered it all up,” and described RCMP leadership as “despicable.”

Soudas was not pleased. Harper's former director of communications was ready to take naughty young Pierre out to the woodshed.

“Leader Pierre Poilievre is dismantling the principled, serious and credible Conservative Party Harper worked so hard to lead and bring to power,” Soudas wrote, “one of substance, maturity and integrity.” Soudas went on: “In a rule-of-law democracy, no opposition leader should ever call for a prime minister or any political rival to be jailed.”

Well, Dimitri, just to quibble — if this political rival is a thoroughly corrupt American fraud artist and sexual offender who attempted to overthrow the government, maybe a teensy-weensy bit of imprisonment would be an acceptable request. And perhaps just a smidgen of flogging.

But point taken. In any political system that has not yet been captured by a noxious butternut squash that walks like a man, it is indeed bad form to suggest jail time for one's opponents.

Poilievre, though, appears to have a case of dictator envy. As the Three Trump Stooges — Kash Patel, Pam Bondi and Noem — turn the U.S. legal system into a slapstick farce, Poilievre wants to get in on the act. As prime minister it seems he would expect the RCMP to be his goon squad. Maybe they would even give him his own little red suit and a pony.

On Monday Poilievre backpedalled a bit as he tried to climb out from the puddle of his own splashing. See, when he called the RCMP leadership “despicable,” he supposedly forgot to narrow it down to just one person, former RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki. Otherwise, Poilievre stands by his comments.

What's interesting to political observers is the source of this attack on Poilievre — not a Liberal or a New Democrat but a prominent old-line Conservative. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said (and The Wire’s Omar Little later paraphrased): “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

As Donald Trump lays waste not only to American justice but even to basic concepts of dignity — this week’s surprise destruction of the White House East Wing arrived like a Category 5 metaphor — his cowering stooges will not criticize. Why? They know opposing him is political suicide. Trump still rules the Republican party.

Poilievre too would be untouchable — had he won. He would be free to declare himself Napoleon V and call his little pony Trigger. Soudas would likely have followed obediently with a shovel.

Alas for Pierre, he did not win. Now the emperor has no armour. Watch the mud start to fly.