I'm writing this on March 5th, 2025 - one day after the latest "Trump tariffs" took effect. At present it seems highly likely first that Mark Carney will be elected liberal party leader, and so prime minister of Canada, on March 9; and, second, that he will run in either an immediate or slightly delayed election as the man to protect Canada from Trump.
Prior to Mr. Trump's tariff announcements and 51st state musings, Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada's conservative opposition party, held an apparently insurmountable lead in the national polls. That lead now seems to be evaporating mainly, I believe, because the conservative reaction to the nation wide jingoism campaign the liberals and their colleagues in the media have been running has them frozen between rocks and hard places.
On the rocks side, Ontario premier Doug Ford just demonstrated the strength of the liberal strategy by running against Trump to successfully bury his own dismal record and win a massive legislative majority. On the hard places side, however, the conservatives can't bring either their agenda, or the liberal record, to the forefront by matching the left on anti-americanism because the media, almost all of which is both ideologically aligned with, and funded by, the liberals will focus on personalities and pretty pictures while beating the anti-Trump drum and ensuring that any reporting they're forced to do on conservative policy triggers the voter's fear of change.
There is a way out of this trap: Poilievre and his party could wholeheartedly embrace Trumpism and so force Carney et al out of their comfort zone to either defend the Trudeau/Biden policies Trump opposes - and opposition to which gave Poilievre his 30 point lead in the polls - or offer alternatives - alternatives that the media would need to defend and thereby open the liberals to the kind of criticism and mockery the alternative media (mainly X in Canada) are best at while forcing the insincerity exhibited by Carney in particular and liberals in general into the open.
The conservative PR plan for this writes itself: Fentanyl kills Canadians too; the Chinese infiltration in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver is a Liberal (not a Canadian) liability; illegals are illegal in both countries; trucking is an international issue; Canadians can be better, nicer, Americans without giving up national identity or anything else; North American free trade, defense, and energy independence go hand in hand; and so on, and so on.
And the implementation strategy is obvious too: issue the talking points stuff and fire up the grass roots - but first blow up the liberal strategy with a big bang: have Poilievre and Smith jointly invite Trump to plan and implement a Trump rally in Calgary during the lead up to the G7 meetings in Kananaskis country June 15th to 17th.
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