Conservative hopefuls fighting over memes
Leadership campaigns enter silly season
As the federal Conservative party’s leadership race draws to a close on May 27, the campaign seems to have entered its silly season.
Candidates and their supporters — some of whom have now been campaigning for more than a year — are taking their final swipes at each other even as completed ballots have begun to roll in to party headquarters.
While libertarian Quebec MP Maxime Bernier appears to be the front-runner after Kevin O’Leary dropped out of the race late last month and endorsed him, the campaigns of such big-tent candidates as Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole also claim to see paths to victory.
Final results will be announced on May 27 at a convention in Toronto. Until then, expect more moments like these in the last days of the leadership marathon:
THE O’TOOLE CAMPAIGN: LITERALLY ON FIRE?
Erin O’Toole’s team is crying foul over a “dark moment” Thursday, with spokeswoman Melanie Paradis saying in an email to party members she was “shocked, outraged, and deeply disappointed.”
Why? Because a Facebook page that posts Maxime Bernier memes — easily shareable, designed-to-be-viral pictures posted to social media — decided to publish a video that shows someone literally burning an O’Toole brochure. The pamphlet, which features a photo of O’Toole, his wife and two kids, gets burned to a crisp above the text: “When Erin O’Toole sends you mail.”
Paradis claimed members of the Bernier campaign team were responsible. “(O’Toole is) the biggest threat to Max. They are panicking now and getting sloppy doing offensive stunts like this.”
Bernier spokesman Maxime Hupé said organizers are “not at all” involved, though several people working for the campaign “liked” the fiery post. The video was removed from Facebook Thursday afternoon.
The page, called “Maximeme Bernier,” features memes ranging from dank to awkward. It publicly denies any affiliation with the official Bernier campaign.
WHO’S WORSE AT MATH?
Andrew Scheer and Bernier have been having at it for the past week over the estimated costs of ending supply management, a major Bernier policy.
Bernier has floated a temporary tax on dairy and poultry as one way to pay for the $15-to-$20-billion loan he estimates will be required to pay for the phase-out of supply management from the dairy, egg and poultry industries. Scheer recently attacked the idea, saying “there is no such thing as a temporary tax.”
Then the Bernier campaign sent out an email titled “Bad math Scheer” and signed by MP Alex Nuttall, which suggested that even with a temporary tax, freemarket milk prices would still be lower than under supply management.
Scheer rebutted with an email that quoted Bernier as saying in a February interview, “I don’t know. I didn’t do the math.” Scheer then offered his own calculations, which suggest Bernier’s tax would end up costing people more.
The ball is now presumably back in Bernier’s court.
PLAYING OFF THE PLAYOFFS?
Vancouver venture capitalist Rick Peterson has pivoted away from fundraising pitches that featured his dogs, Beau and Smooch, and is now trying to link his campaign to playoff hockey.
In an email Thursday, Peterson targeted Edmonton Oilers and Ottawa Senators fans who “know what leadership looks like” (ignoring the fact the Oilers were eliminated Wednesday night).
Saying his father founded a kids’ hockey league in Grande Prairie, Alta., Peterson — who wore an Oilers jersey while participating in a leaders’ debate in Edmonton earlier in the campaign — says in the video, “I scored the overtime goal in the Stanley Cup final every Saturday out there on that rink, as did a million other kids across Canada and still do today.”
He brings to the race “leadership lessons I’ve learned as a professional hockey player,” he said, explaining he played hockey for the University of Alberta Golden Bears, and after graduation played in a pro league in France, where his team won two national championships.
As of mid-afternoon Thursday, the video had about 70 views.
SUBJECT LINE OPTIONAL?
With a decidedly different kind of fundraising tactic, the Deepak Obhrai campaign sent out an email this week with the subject line: “Email Template,” prompting some Twitter users to gleefully share screenshots.
Like Bernier and O’Toole, whose campaigns have dabbled in memes, Obhrai added his own to the mix in this latest missive — his face superimposed on an image of a bodybuilder, with the tagline: “When you are all about strong Conservative values.”