Scheer’s long (humiliating) goodbye
Like the last dinner guest who won’t go home, Andrew Scheer has stuck around far too long as Conservative leader.
For Scheer, the party should have ended last Dec. 12 when he said he’d had enough and was quitting as Conservative leader. But instead of leaving right away, Scheer wouldn’t go until a successor was chosen.
It was a bad decision. Now, unlike the oblivious guest who ignores hints that he should leave, Scheer should reconsider his decision and quit immediately for the good of the party.
If he doesn’t go, Conservative caucus members should oust him and appoint an interim leader to head the party for the next three months until a new leader is elected in late August.
That’s because with each passing week, Scheer makes another embarrassing screw-up that damages the reputation and credibility not only of himself, but of his party at a time when it needs to be seen as trying to hold its own against the governing Liberals.
Scheer’s long goodbye must be a humiliating experience for the lame-duck leader — and if it’s not, then it should be.
Hardly a day goes by without another party insider demanding he leave the job, without party loyalists shaking their heads in frustration with his performance or without yet another poll showing the Conservatives falling further behind the governing Liberals.
Kory Teneycke, who was Stephen Harper’s director of communications and managed the victorious 2018 Ontario Tory campaign, calls Scheer “a zombie leader.”
Importantly, though, party loyalists can’t simply dismiss the situation they now find themselves in under Scheer by saying all will be right once a new leader is chosen. Indeed, this could hurt for a long time.
Additionally, it raises the question of why Scheer even wants to stay on.
For his ego? For the extra pay as Opposition leader? To keep the party paying for his kids to attend an expensive private school? To keep living at Stornoway, the Opposition leader’s official residence in Ottawa?
Since losing last October’s federal election, Scheer has been at the centre of a series of self-inflicted controversies that shine a light on why former prime minister Stephen Harper never considered him for a senior cabinet post.
Scheer’s latest mess surfaced this week when he revealed in a CTV interview that he no longer is seeking to renounce his U.S. citizenship. “Given the fact that I won’t be prime minister, I discontinued the process,” he subsequently told reporters. During the election Scheer ran into a storm of controversy when it was discovered he had dual citizenship, but had not told anyone.
The list of other controversies and tone-deaf moves is long:
They include his Trump-like criticism of the World Health Organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
His failure to denounce Tory MP Derek Sloan for accusing Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, of being disloyal to Canada and of working for China.
The revelation that even party executives didn’t know he’d arranged a deal for the party to pay for his children to go to a private school.
His unfounded charges that Justin Trudeau is letting “fraudsters” and “criminals” abuse federal aid programs for people out of work because of the pandemic.
And there is more. Scheer’s miserable performance has helped contribute to the Tories’ slide in the polls.
An EKOS poll released last week showed the Liberals with a commanding 14-point lead over the Conservatives, which would translate in a huge majority if an election were held soon. Alberta and Saskatchewan were the only provinces where the Tories were in the lead.
For his part, Scheer brushes aside calls for him to step down, saying he was given a vote of confidence by the Tory caucus to stay on until a successor was chosen and that he plans to run again in the next election, whenever that might be.
At this stage, though, Liberals might be among the few people rooting for Scheer and who want him to stay on as Conservative leader — and they’d probably like him to remain in the job forever.