POILIEVRE'S APPEAL FUELLED BY TRUDEAU'S SANCTIMONY

The enigma of Pierre Poilievre. There is a surge of curiosity over Pierre Poilievre's exceptional ability to gather whole multitudes to his various rallies. Notwithstanding that he obviously has the star status of a young Elvis, (I would choose the You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog phase as the basis for this comparison) it is still something of a mild puzzle to the political mind why so many people, so enthusiastically attend large rallies many months before the Conservative party leadership vote actually takes place.

We must first ask the obvious questions in exploring this phenomenon.

Is it the socks?

I cannot give a definitive answer on this point. Most of the film from his rallies offer only what people in the TV business call “head and shoulder” shots, thus limiting our ability to make a firm judgment on his hosiery. Nor so far as I can tell, is there any fixed moment in his many appearances where he makes it a point to highlight the footwear. I think his campaign team have determined that the socks appeal is something they can bypass. We must look to other factors.

Some of the more experienced mages of our political culture sense — and they proffer this observation in the tone of severe warning — that he is deliberately playing a “populist” hand. I willingly allow this leaves me confused, being not certain, at all, why playing to the people — if that is indeed what he is doing — should be seen as a negative.

There's a lot of ground being covered with the verb here, that “playing” to the people. Of any politician who directs his interest and passion to the concerns of the great broad generality, to those at lower income, those on farms or in fishing boats — those who used to be referred to as the working class — could not that interest be a sincere and honest orientation, a genuine effort to direct government priority to those most in need?

Neither am I sure what the difficulty is supposed to be for a politician to be populist. Can it be that liking the people you are asking to vote for you has become in this increasingly upside down world a flaw?

This would be a sad turn and a strange turn in a democracy. Whom should politicians try to please? Attendees at great climate conferences in distant cities who have condemned Canada as a “petro state” and want to ruin our number one industry? International bureaucrats, Hollywood busybodies, the merchants of wokeism?

Here's a question on this point. Would most Canadians vote for a leader who is definitively anti-populist, boldly elitist, scornful of the common man?

Where then is the politician who will publicly brand him or herself as such? Who will walk on a stage and proclaim, “I have no intention of appealing to you yobs and pickup drivers, not while there are more serene BMW owners and earnest environmental science professors out there for the picking.”

There is another and I think rather wild reach to explain his early dominance, that Poilievre is wantonly exposing our temperate and mild Canadian politics to (gasp) Trumpism. Those who reach for this claim do not seem to realize that they are implying “Trumpism” is a seductive approach for a Canadian leadership campaign.

Poilievre as Trump? This is a dart in my humble opinion that never finds the board. It is so wildly off the mark that it may be hitting someone walking the dog outside the pub. It may even — this is worse — be hitting the poor dog.

Would it be too much to suggest that in character and style the distinction between Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre is so great that, as between both, we may be dealing with members of a different species?

Poilievre for one doesn't bake his hair before public appearances. Nor does he display that expansive sense of ego that characterizes the phenomenon that knocked off Hillary Clinton.

The Trumpism salvo is a weirdly misdirected waste of artillery.

The easy answer to what so many seem to find an enigma is that Poilievre, outside of his own range of appeal (the Elvis factor above referenced), is also collecting the ever-swelling discontent over the economy, the lava-bubbling outrage over the abuse and neglect of our oil and gas industry, and the never-ending sanctimony of the Trudeau government.

The present government is tireless in implying that the Canadian electorate is not living up to it, to the high woke visions of its leading ministers and spokespeople. That the people are failing the government. That the electorate has a lot of fixing up to do before they are worthy of Singh-Trudeau Liberalism.

They are constantly going on that Canadians are racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, colonialist, white supremacist and deficient in all the current and most fashionable virtue poses. Do you ever get the impression that when Trudeau is apologizing “for Canadians” that implicitly he is asking Canadians to apologize, to him?

Looking down on your electorate is, I suppose, one way of avoiding the dread populist label, but it may equally build up, over time, some energetic backlash. Perhaps this is a clue to our enigma.

A lot of the fuel in Poilievre's rocket is coming from a massive leak from the other guy's.

THE TRUMPISM SALVO IS ... WEIRDLY MISDIRECTED.

CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS Federal Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre has an exceptional ability to gather whole multitudes to his various rallies, months before a vote actually takes place, writes Rex Murphy.