Episode #37: How the Liberal-NDP deal changes the Conservative leadership race
Episode #37: How the Liberal-NDP deal changes the Conservative leadership race
Tim and Chad are back to discuss the latest campaign developments.
Appears in this episode
When the Conservatives launched their leadership race earlier this year, the date to name a leader was set with at least one factor in mind: the need to have a leader in place in case the party headed into an election in the fall.
But now that the Liberals and New Democrats have signed a deal that could extend the life of this Parliament to 2025, the Conservative leadership campaign’s urgency has changed.
Has that changed the race itself?
To break down the latest developments in and around the Conservative leadership contest, I’m joined again by Chad Rogers of Crestview Strategy and Tim Powers of Summa Strategies.
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Episode #37: How the Liberal-NDP deal changes the Conservative leadership race
Given the CPC's refusal during its last convention to even acknowledge climate change in its policy book, the Liberals' ambitious climate plan should boost Pierre Poilievre's CPC leadership prospects among the party's base, if only as a knee-jerk act of defiance. That's certainly how he's campaigning.
If he wins, the Liberals are more likely to win the next election. I don't know if Trudeau and Singh planned this as a wedge issue in the CPC leadership race, but I think it will work to their benefit by provoking an own-goal by the Conservatives. That would give the Liberals the remaining years until 2030 to implement and refine their climate policies -- a level of predictability business will welcome.
As to the Liberals "abandoning the centre", the Conservatives are making a strategic error if they fail to see climate change as now a firmly centrist issue; it's no longer a hobby-horse of the tree-hugging left. Just ask the business community.
I have to admit the part of the conversation that caught my attention was the back-and-forth on blockchains and cryptocurrencies and the political play Poilievre is attempting to make here.
Is this Petey's equivalent to Justin's pitch to a slice of the retail audience with the promise of PR electoral reform in 2015? The PR electoral reform folks tend to be passionate about it, the various systems can get pretty convoluted, while the vast majority just go 'huh?' At least electoral reform was directly relevant to how politics works and the basic concept of proportional representation in general can be explained. But blockchain ledgers and distributed computing systems? Win over some, scare over a lot?
Chad's effort to turn it into a generational conflict over asset rights, not so sure how traction-worthy that is. Or has the broader generational appeal of vaping. People who worry about assets, I suspect, tend to worry about risk. If you vote in order to manage risk, are you really a crypto enthusiast? Crypto, I gather, appears to be primarily driven by ideology, but perhaps not one that sends enthusiasts to the voting booth to elect a distant representative in a hierarchical representational democracy.
This seems to be PP's ideological dilemma, he has adopted the ideological lingo of libertarian freedom while running for PM in a hierarchical representational system. The unwary may not notice, but the blockchain de-centralizers certainly will. So again, what's Petey's real play here? Smoke & mirrors?
I mean, at the next federal election leaders debates, does he really want a bunch of questions on crypto, blockchains, and DeFi? And, of course, the inevitable, so leaders, what's your party's position on ponzi schemes? In other words, Petey seems keen to drag a cult conversation into mainstream politics in order to be the beneficiary of the disruptive effects. But can he manage the political outcomes? Or will he be devoured by The Borg?
The Borg? "An extension of the self-organizing internet ecosystem, Bitcoin is the world’s first self-sovereign digital organization" - from Sovereignism, Robert Breedlove (the guy Petey is channeling)
https://breedlove22.medium.com/sovereignism-part-i-digital-creative-destruction-ad5e8eeedbbf