On second thought: “Where did it all go so wrong?” is a question almost every federal party, save for the Bloc Quebecois, is asking themselves this week. But the Conservatives, as the biggest losers on election night — at least when their goals are contrasted with their results — are doing the most second-guessing.
At TVO Matt Gurney spoke with an unnamed Conservative campaign staffer about the decision to sideline Doug Ford (“Ford needed to go away until his popularity bounced back. But that didn’t mean the entire campaign. And we could have used his team. There are still people in the Ontario party that could have helped us do better because they know how to win in the 416/905, but, when we decided to break from Ford, we broke from all of them.”) and Andrew Scheer’s social conservatism (“We should have dragged Scheer to a Pride parade. That hurt us in the GTA. Abortion hurt us in Quebec; same-sex marriage hurt us in the GTA.”)
Conservative pundits, party officials and at least one past prime minister have weighed in on whether Scheer should get a chance for a do-over as Conservative leader in the next election. Scheer has reflected on his performance and concluded he’s up to the task: “It’s always difficult to fall short of goals that we’ve set ourselves. There’s no one more disappointed than me in the results of the campaign, but there’s no one more eager to get it right and fix the issues that didn’t work this time.”
Sir Tainley
Article URL : https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-purple-senator/