LIBERALS PANIC AND RESORT TO ABORTION-CONSPIRACY THEORIES.

This election isn’t going quite as the Liberals had planned. Their strategy of making mandatory vaccinations the big wedge issue appears to be dissipating by the hour as the Tories have essentially matched the Liberal’s position.

But it is still early days in the campaign, and the Liberals must be taking some comfort in knowing they have lots of time to reach into their big bag of wedge issues. The big one of course being abortion. The tried tested and true strategy of fearmongering on this issue has been an election staple for the Liberals for decades. In 2019, barely a day went by where abortion didn’t make an appearance in a press conference or attack ad.

The Liberals were probably planning to reach into their reserve and dust off abortion during week three of the campaign, when the fearmongering makes the deepest impact.

But then Erin O’toole did something that threw a wrench into that plan as well. During a campaign stop this week, O’toole unequivocally stated that if elected he would lead a pro-choice government and would ensure that abortion services are available to Canadians everywhere. He said it with confidence and credibility, and it is clear that he plans on saying it as much as needed.

For anyone who has been following O’toole closely, this statement would have come as no surprise. He has been clear that he is prochoice since his election as party leader.

But for the Liberal War Room, it was decidedly off script. Timing wise, abortion was making too early of an appearance on the campaign trail. But more importantly, there was zero ambiguity in O’toole’s statement, which for the Liberals, means no room to wedge.

A panic must have set into the Grit’s campaign HQ, as evidenced by Maryam Monsef’s incoherent eight-part twitter meltdown that came hours after O’toole made this statement. In a desperate, breathless rant, the minister of women did her best to spin. Since she couldn’t do anything with the words that O’toole had spoken, she resorted to the only thing she had left: full-on conspiracy.

She claimed that O’toole was just “pretending” to be pro-choice during his recent campaign stop, and that he was also “pretending” to be pro-choice in his recently unveiled platform.

She sounded less like a Minister of the Crown and more like a one of those partisan bots without a profile photo that the mute and block button were invented for.

What was clear in Monsef’s twitter manifesto is that no amount of spin can hide the glaring fact that the Liberal and Conservative position on abortion is, as of today, identical. Both Trudeau and O’toole have made it abundantly clear they are pro-choice personally and politically, and would lead pro-choice governments. If the best the Liberals can do in the face of this reality is to claim, without any credible evidence, that O’toole is just “pretending” to be prochoice, then they have some trouble on the horizon.

The Liberal war room simply isn’t equipped to run a campaign against the Conservatives without driving wedges on hot-button issues. But without a clean opening, driving a wedge will prove to be very challenging indeed.

Of course, O’toole’s emphatic support of abortion rights won’t stop the Liberals from attempting to weaponize the issue for electoral gain. They are simply too invested in, and comfortable with this strategy to part ways with it now.

They will continue to try and make it the wedge they want so badly for it to be. But that plan, and this election, just may not go as the Liberals planned.