Ontario PCs face their Trumpian moment — which way will they tilt?

In Doug Ford, Ontario’s Tories are facing a Trumpian moment of truth as they choose their next leader — and possibly our next populist premier.

We’ve seen it before, and it could happen all over again: Long before Donald Trump took the White House, Doug’s brother Rob Ford took city hall.

Each proved the power of populism, negativism, nihilism. One promised to “stop the gravy train” in Toronto, another pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

Despite being children of wealth, they recast themselves as enemies of the elites. Thwarting social conventions — be it smoking crack or cavorting with porn stars — they remade themselves as social conservatives.

Now, Doug Ford is campaigning by reincarnating himself as rightful heir to that wrongful tradition of impostor populism. Learning from his little brother, he understands that the Big Lie — be it on global warming, sex education or tax cutting — is best told by being consistently inconsistent with the facts.

If you tap into deep veins of public frustration, cynicism, resentment and contempt with shallow slogans, you will be richly rewarded. No matter the contradictions, the best confidence men — con men, for short — grasp that the most powerful politicians are those who understand the power of suggestion.

But this column is not offered as a finger-wagging warning against the perils of populism, nor a nostalgic lament for the politics of the past. Rather, it is intended as a challenge to the rest of us to find our voice, clear our heads, and listen up:

Not all populists are bad. But the good populists aren’t very good at it.

Donald Trump got through to people. Hillary Clinton got stuck on “deplorables.”

Rob Ford connected. George Smitherman couldn’t.

Doug Ford pressed every Tory button, and his rivals aped him. Don’t count on the other candidates, or media truth squads, or critical columnists to stop him, just as it didn’t slow Trump.

The only enduring antidote to right-wing populism and nihilism must be a progressive populism that proffers inspiration over frustration. Progressive populism must find its countervailing voice.

For what is populism but the political doctrine that appeals to ordinary people who believe their concerns are disregarded by the establishment? That today’s populism has been turned on its head, co-opted by rightwing elites, is not just irony but larceny.

An expedient populist is the politician who tells people what they want to hear, habitually untruthfully. A truthful populist is someone who tells people what they need to hear without telling tall tales, so that it has the ring of truth.

How will Tories parse the populism this week? It’s impossible to predict the results of so much mixed-up media coverage, frenzied membership sales and wild social media memes among the rivals:

Caroline Mulroney, counting on beginner’s luck, implausibly pitches herself as the “change candidate” despite being the daughter of ex-PM Brian Mulroney, whom she deployed as a high-profile fundraiser in the home-stretch (no cash envelopes, please).

Christine Elliott is the two-time leadership loser who quit the legislature in a huff. Now she has renounced her past progressive credentials (an early supporter of trans rights) and the party’s carefully considered platform on carbon pricing in order to endear herself with regressive social conservatives.

And then there’s Ford, who casts himself as a sharp-pencilled taxfighter, but who has never lived down allegations in the Globe and Mail that he was a sharp-pencilled drug dealer as a young man. Despite his heated denials, the Globe tells me that a threatened libel suit never materialized — yet that hasn’t stopped Ford from railing against imagined media conspiracies and Tory plots to thwart him (reminiscent of Trumpian claims the election was “rigged”).

Then there’s Tanya Granic Allen, the fringe candidate who can’t stop talking about anal sex, and whose supporters are deeply attracted to Ford. Forget not the fringe, for they may put Ford over the top.

Let us ponder the power of populism, the impotence of policy, and the madness of Potemkin parties whose leadership races reward surging membership sales over substance. We have seen this act before, in Washington and Toronto.

We were warned.