Polling shows the Liberals ahead in Canada. This should make no sense even to a Liberal. But does it?
There have been more than enough scandals and failures by Trudeau and his (oh I get to legitimately use some of the words news media writers falsely use to describe conservatives and Americans now!) benighted, hapless Liberals.
So there are those who are stymied and earnestly ask questions framed like this in today’s National Post:
McParland writes, “… The Aga Khan trip. Election reform. The India costume parade. SNC-Lavalin. Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. The Kielburger brothers and the WE fiasco. Blackface. Vaccine rollout. Julie Payette.”
It’s a long list, spelling utter political doom for decades. Obviously. In a sane world.
“It’s not even necessary to provide details; they’re so familiar people recognize them in shorthand,” he goes on. But that’s where he’s wrong. People aren’t really that familiar with these things at all. When I have to talk to a Liberal because I must (pace our Ann Coulter), either they’re really good actors (and I wouldn’t doubt that —it’s a liberal thing) or they are really good liars (again maybe…), because they don’t seem to have the foggiest idea why I wouldn’t vote Liberal. Each time, I have to repeat that good Kelly McParland list, and explain why each failure is more impeachable than the last.
Sure the stories have been in the news media, they’ll say. And they’re right. Deceptive, but right. They’re in the news for a day or two. Enough for the media to claim they did report it, and fans to point at it, but we all know it’s a lark. And other stories aren’t ever told.
So let’s delve once again.
Look at the very display of the article by Kelly McParland as seen above. It’s accompanied, as is almost always the case in any news story about Canada (never mind Trudeau), with another giant, snazzy shot of… Justin Trudeau, as if taken by a lover, or as if it’s an ad for The Bachelor, or it’s some idiotic soap opera ad —complete with the “fog” drama. Trudeau could commit murder, and they’d have some thoughtful-looking glam shot of him accompanying the story (coverage of which would be over in two days).
Here’s a photo in an article about some polling done last year — and the text below it:
Could they get a closer, more pensive-looking shot? Or squeeze a bigger one in there?
Did we not know what Trudeau looks like? Personally, so much so that I can’t look at another one. I turn my gaze away in reflex. Yet this is what we get in every paper, 13 times every day. It’s a classic marketing technique. There’s no mystery here.
Most people don’t know who Erin O’Toole is and couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup even if it were him who committed murder. From that polling article: “The poll also suggests O’Toole, newly crowned Conservative leader, is an unknown quantity for a majority of Canadians.” Golly. Shocka. And leads to “begging the question.”
Kelly McParland gives it a shot:
- “It’s a truism of Canadian politics that Liberals are more readily forgiven their transgressions than Conservatives.” —Forgiven by whom? And why are they forgiven? And why do they get away with this?
- “Perhaps it’s the reluctance to add the risk of a new and untried regime when so many other aspects of life have become unpredictable.” —Or the opposite: Nothing the Trudeau Liberals have done has worked at all or at least not well (if only we were told that properly in the news, darn the luck), so we must try something new if we’re not stupid. And the Conservative Party is hardly a new, untried concept.
- “The pandemic lets the government dominate media attention at the expense of the opposition.” —No, the news media lets the government do that. This particular Trudeau government, that is. (It’s a weird virus.)
- “Erin O’Toole, the new Conservative leader, continues to struggle to build awareness among voters.” —If you don’t write stories about him, and don’t include four glam-shots per day for no reason, then voila, nobody will have heard of him. See above about “begging the question.”
- “Trump was a recurrent aid to Liberals; the worse he acted the easier it was to view Trudeau’s Liberals as better in comparison.” — That’s true to a large point. But Kelly McParland acknowledged — and even the Globe and Mail’s Andrew Coyne acknowledged last week (as I wrote) — that Trump’s America has done three or four times better than Canada in getting the most important thing done: Getting the Covid vaccine into people’s arms; and, unmentioned by most, even getting a Covid vaccine available this soon in the first place. Where’s Canada’s contribution to this warp-speed vaccine? Nowhere. We’ve done literally nothing. Liberals have been horrible — deadly horrible — compared to Trump — in this most important thing. And this is a comparison that’s literally affecting Canadians’ very lives. So where’s the media on that? Nowhere. No. Where.Â
- “Trudeau’s willingness to blanket the country in borrowed cash to offset the pandemic was positively received, but the bills are coming due and a potential backlash is burbling away.” — There will be exactly no backlash, because the news media will see to that. Unless the news media spell out the fiasco, there will be no fiasco. History tells us that.
- “No wonder Trudeau is eager to get to the polls before too many more voters catch on.” — Sorry but that’s a miss-the-point-a-palooza. They will not catch on. Not at this rate.
The point is that the news media is controlling the narrative. To their liking. And their liking is Trudeau. Liberalism. Wokeness. Progressivism. Full stop.
So it makes perfect sense to Liberals that they are ahead in the polls. That this is so confusing and confounding to Conservatives speaks to an embarrassing naivety or something worse —that they’re benighted on this point. Hapless.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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