AN ELITE ... WANTS TO IMPOSE THEIR VIEWS ON OTHERS.

no history of championing cultural values issues, antielite populism or much of anything to do with immigration, at least not before the last federal election campaign. “Over the years we’ve had literally dozens of conversations about whether or not we would eventually run and what we would run on, what kind of issues attract us to politics and things like that,” said one Ontario Conservative who has known Leitch since the mid-1990s. “I can tell you the number of times issues related to antiCanadian values came up was zero. Like not three, not seven, zero.”

Another longtime acquaintance in the party tacked up her embrace of those issues to “100 per cent pure bullshit tactic(s).”

Leitch believes that last

Last week, just before Donald Trump swore the oath of office in Washington, Kevin O’Leary, reality television star, businessman and professional self-promoter, appeared on CNN, live from a studio in Florida. The title of the segment, preserved online, was “Canada’s Donald Trump?”

O’Leary brings to the Conservative race the other half of the Trump equation, the half that Leitch lacks — the celebrity, the bombast, the sheer cussed refusal to care about looking dumb on TV. A Forum poll released shortly after his announcement put him in the clear lead: among Canadians at large, Conservative supporters, and party members. Leitch, after all her press, all her great bets and provocative moves, was in a three-way statistical tie for fifth.

Horse race polling in this kind of leadership race has limited value. It doesn’t measure membership sales, second choices or ridingby-riding strength, all of which are as important, if not more, than total national support. But for Leitch, having gambled so much, it must gall. She bet her whole reputation on a toxic idea — becoming Canada’s less lunatic Donald Trump. Now, with O’Leary in the race, she can’t even be that anymore. Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary.