A CLINTON IN TRUMP’S CLOTHING

The film that most closely resembles Donald Trump’s unlikely ascension to the U.S. presidency is the cult classic, Caddyshack, in which Rodney Dangerfield plays a boisterous, nouveau-riche business tycoon wreaking havoc on the members of a snobby private golf club. Dangerfield’s character relishes in sticking it to the club’s prudish elites and tops it off by winning a high-stakes match against the principal antagonist — a curmudgeonly old judge.

Trump accomplished essentially the same feat. Despite being an Ivy League-educated billionaire, he channelled his inner Dangerfield and ran roughshod over his opponents in the Republican primary, then against Hillary Clinton, leaving various classes of “elites” — pollsters, pundits, and anyone who cares about civility in our public debate — dumbfounded.

Canadian politics doesn’t have its own Dangerfield, but one of the front runners for the Conservative Party leadership race likes to dress up in his clothes.

Kellie Leitch, whose anti-elitist bona fides include being a pediatric orthopedic surgeon with an MBA, has said Trump’s message is an exciting one that “needs to be delivered here in Canada as well.” Confronted about her plan to introduce a “values test” for wouldbe immigrants, she recently stated “I am not a racist.”

The strange irony is that by going down this road, if Leitch is to be compared to any American politician, it’s not Trump, but Clinton. Both are charter members of the establishment, blindly ambitious, deceptive and willing to say literally anything to get elected. Like Clinton on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Leitch licks her finger, puts it in the air, sees where the wind is blowing and heads in that direction. Her decision to be Canada’s standard-bearer for the populist impulses now inflicting too many western democracies is clear evidence. It has nothing to do with her political convictions and everything to do with focus-group tested messages. For example, in April, a teary-eyed Leitch appeared on TV, apologizing for her role in championing the Tories’ “barbaric cultural practices tip line” in the last federal election. “If I could go back in time, which I can’t, I would change things. I would not have is political opportunism at its worst. Isn’t sincerity a virtue we should still expect in our political leaders? Is that too much to ask for?

What’s most dangerous about Leitch’s gambit is the potential long-term damage to the Canadian conservative movement. What she’s doing has implications far bigger than her own campaign. While most of the Tory leadership contenders see the party’s chances of victory lying firmly in the embrace of lower taxes, spending restraint and sensible social policy, Leitch is staking her whole campaign on the identity question.

Conservatives in recent federal governments, from Brian Mulroney to Jason Kenney, have expended large sums of political capital trying to shed the Tories’ image as being hostile to immigrants. Progress has been made. To toy with throwing that away now does a great disservice to their legacies.

Movement conservatives across the country must stand up to Leitch’s ploy for that and many other reasons, including the fact that it simply isn’t conservative. If anything, her rhetoric mimics the poisonous brand of identity politics over which we have attacked the left for the past several decades.

I understand that the values shtick activates a segment of the population. I get that wedge politics works, particularly in closed elections like party leadership races.

But Kellie Leitch should remember something we were all taught growing up: just because something’s popular doesn’t make it right.