O’LEARY IS ‘IN’ AND RACE IS HIS TO LOSE

We need to talk about Kevin. I have tried not to during coverage of the Conservative leadership contest but am obliged to desist from the experiment.

O’Leary is “in” and is now very publicly committed to a race that runs a real risk of failure. His “trust me, I’m on TV” persona is not the product of grand slam business success.

His career has been checkered, to say the least, ranging from his ignominious departure from Mattel, after the company bought his educational software firm TLC for $4 billion and later sold it for $27 million, to the performance of his mutual fund company.

But failure was never clear cut; his critics might accuse him of selling Mattel a lemon, yet his supporters could holler “caveat emptor” and point out he made $11 million from the deal.

But he is now in the full glare of the public spotlight. There will be no disavowing defeat this time.

We have to talk about him because his entrance transforms the race. As soon as he confirmed he was running, he became the prohibitive favourite. That’s because for the Conservative members who will elect the next leader, it’s all about who can beat Justin Trudeau in 2019.

The polling I have seen suggests that most think O’Leary is best placed to do that, although a significant number also rate Maxime Bernier.

Kellie Leitch is still polling strongly, while Chris Alexander is also doing very well, on the heels of strong performances in two Frenchlanguage debates.

Surprisingly, candidates such as Lisa Raitt and Andrew Scheer are said to be trailing by quite some distance — an indication that being a caucus or media darling is not translating into membership support.

But focus groups and private polls suggest the contest is O’Leary’s to lose. He has exploded like a hand grenade into this race and he can expect vicious retaliation to follow.

Campaign managers report he is already drawing support from their lists, particularly among fiscal conservatives.

As one told me, there’s no point attacking O’Leary as a dollar-store Donald Trump because many Conservatives like the presidentelect.

Hence the coming salvo of attacks on his policies and past comments — such as his claim that “there’s nothing proud about being a warrior.”

O’Leary has said that all his comments prior to entering the race “don’t mean anything.” But politics, like the Internet, does not have a delete key. He can expect to have every stupid thing he has ever said cast back at him.

Conservative members may also be told that O’Leary “didn’t come back for you,” à la Michael Ignatieff. Until early yesterday, his LinkedIn profile had him residing in Boston (it has since changed to Toronto).

O’Leary may say something outrageous in response, dismissing his rivals as “idiots” or “insane,” as he does on TV.

But he needs to play nice if he is to win.

There are now 14 candidates in the race and history suggests such a large field might produce a shock, as party members opt for a compromise candidate, rather than back a more polarizing front-runner.

That was certainly the lesson learned during the Liberal leadership in 2006, when Stéphane Dion came up the middle to beat Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae.

It is highly unlikely that with so many candidates, O’Leary can win 50 per cent plus one on the first ballot. So he needs supporters of other candidates to break to him. If he doesn’t alienate Conservatives by deepening divisions within the party, I suspect this will happen.

By far the largest subgroup are the fiscal conservatives and they like O’Leary’s focus on the Trudeau government’s point of vulnerability — debt and deficits.

As O’Leary said in the Facebook launch of his campaign, Trudeau is intent on plunging the country into 38 years of unbalanced budgets and $1.5 trillion of debt. “There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to let him do that,” he said, pointing out that the people who will suffer most will be millennials.

This is an audience the Conservatives need to win, if they are ever going to get back into power. The message that the Trudeau government is to blame for an economy that doesn’t give them the chance to own a home or secure a well-paying job may well resonate to the extent that sunny-days Liberal optimists become Conservative skeptics.

As he told me last May: “If you want to win an election, you have to appeal to people who are concerned about their financial future. All the other issues are irrelevant.”

Not all other issues are likely to be irrelevant to Conservative members. His inability to speak French could prove fatal. Last year, he dismissed the prospect of taking French lessons as a “very bad use of my time.” He now says he’s “learning again.”

Yet even in Quebec, there are a surprising number of Conservatives who tell focus groups they would contemplate supporting O’Leary as the best prospect for victory in 2019.

If he does triumph in Toronto in May, it will be a very different Conservative Party that emerges.

For one thing, the weekly caucus meeting will have to move to Tuesday from midweek.

“Kevin films Shark Tank on a Wednesday,” said one Tory.