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Joel Johannesen
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Latest posts by Joel Johannesen (see all)

Ann Coulter

Investigate This!

The Republicans are back in charge in the House...

Liberals Give ‘Til It Hurts (You)

Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly...

Scrooge Was A Liberal

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Like a Condom, the First Amendment Can’t Always Protect You

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Dennis Prager

America, Not Keith Ellison, Decides What Book A Congressman Takes His Oath On

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Why I Smoke (Cigars)

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Note To Angry Republicans: Stay Angry, But Vote Republican

One repeatedly hears that some conservatives and Republicans will...

Mike Adams

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Fellowship in the Woodlands

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Left State University

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Salim Mansur

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William D. Gairdner

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Every week is Sex Week

Yale University is arguably the most prestigious institution of...

Male Studies: A proposed curriculum

The 93rd anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge,...

John Stossel

Are Americans Cheap?

The New York Times and Washington Post editorialize about...

Working Mothers Need The Free Market, Too

Last week, my “20/20” co-anchor, Elizabeth Vargas, returned from...

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Birdwatching, Government Style

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Paul Jackson

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Story behind nation’s religious collapse

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All laws rely on some moral authority

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David Warren

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Taking on the Reformation

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Michael Coren

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Within the propaganda and tawdry political theatre that is...

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Last week on my television show, we interviewed Jodie...

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For more than two years I wrote a men’s...

Rory Leishman

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Editor’s note:  This is the latest in an ongoing...

Media neglect sources of homegrown Islamist extremism

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Shameful neglect of the mentally ill

We Canadians like to think of ourselves as an...

A case study in poverty and corruption

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Canada’s real poverty problem

The Conference Board of Canada ranks Canada’s record on...

Theo Caldwell

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As of this past week, the Canada Revenue Agency...

Canada’s Complicity in the US Surveillance State

In Canadian political debate, accusing one’s opponent of advocating...

Of course Canada is more business-friendly than the United States

A recent report from Bloomberg News ranks Canada as...

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I voted for Rob Ford. Normally, I embrace the...

Good luck, America (you’ll need it)

And here I believed that Obamacare, chronic 8 percent...

P T B C

Joel Johannesen
Follow Joel
Latest posts by Joel Johannesen (see all)

Ann Coulter

Investigate This!

The Republicans are back in charge in the House...

Liberals Give ‘Til It Hurts (You)

Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly...

Scrooge Was A Liberal

It’s the Christmas season, so godless liberals are citing...

Like a Condom, the First Amendment Can’t Always Protect You

First of all, I feel so much more confident...

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Call Our Troops Homophobes

The Pentagon’s poll on “don’t ask, don’t tell” is...

Dennis Prager

America, Not Keith Ellison, Decides What Book A Congressman Takes His Oath On

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the...

Why I Smoke (Cigars)

There are few personal confessions more likely to alienate...

The Smugness Of The War’s Opponents

In this week’s New York Times Book Review, a...

Is A Gay Who Opposes Same-Sex Marriage A Hypocrite?

Why did a gay prostitute tell the media about...

Note To Angry Republicans: Stay Angry, But Vote Republican

One repeatedly hears that some conservatives and Republicans will...

Mike Adams

Kids Write Obama on Abortion; Obama Misplaces Them

I’m getting sick and tired of the Obama administration...

Stand For Life

A former student recently emailed that she was disappointed...

Fellowship in the Woodlands

Most of America's problems are cultural. Even our economic...

A Queer Need for Rejection

Whenever I write about the issue of First Amendment...

Left State University

William Irvine is a professor of philosophy at Wright...

Salim Mansur

Israel: Decades-old conflict not about to cease

Since 9/11, western powers have behaved more or less...

The better man lost the U.S. election

There will be scores of books written and words...

The puzzle in U.S. presidential elections

The role of the electoral college in American politics...

Bad egg about to roll out of White House

In less than two weeks, Americans will either elect...

Free speech distinguishes the West from the rest

In Crowds and Power, the late Elias Canetti, a...

William D. Gairdner

Canada’s Thought Police ~ Shame On Us!

Below is a story that appeared in the New...

Religion, Sex, and the City

At the recent McGill Conference, I was asked to...

A Fun Debate

This past weekend I participated in the annual Civitas...

Restoring A Pro-Family State

We see hints of it every day now. I...

From History to Harper and the “nation” situation

The commentary below is one citizen’s best effort to...

Barbara Kay

Why Quebec is banning the burka

Whether they admit it or not, virtually all Westerners...

I distrust Obama—but that doesn’t make me paranoid

Like many Canadians, I find American politics have a...

The cult of multisexualism: It’s not all good

Sex education in the schools isn’t new. As John...

Every week is Sex Week

Yale University is arguably the most prestigious institution of...

Male Studies: A proposed curriculum

The 93rd anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge,...

John Stossel

Are Americans Cheap?

The New York Times and Washington Post editorialize about...

Working Mothers Need The Free Market, Too

Last week, my “20/20” co-anchor, Elizabeth Vargas, returned from...

White Guilt Doesn’t Help Blacks

Complaints about racism dominate the media discussion of the...

Property Theft In America

Do you live in a blighted home in a...

Birdwatching, Government Style

Here’s a job that’s really for the birds: staring...

Paul Jackson

Suzuki playing gutter politics

I have likely never seen a more outrageous, mean-spirited...

Grit record terror-ible

The hypocrisy of our nation’s federal Liberals obviously knows...

Britain’s Blair takes tumble

Troubles open way for Tories LONDON—Prime Minister Tony Blair and...

Being ‘likable’ isn’t enough

This is what should frighten all of us about...

Disastrous prospect

The nation will spin into chaos if Dion becomes...

Ted Byfield

CBC’s attempt to mould us led to its decline

The CBC disclosed last week it wants to get...

Counter ‘revolution’ brewing in Quebec

English-speaking Canada was given further evidence last week that...

Shades of Tommy Douglas!

Alberta has basked in prosperity until Honest Ed came...

Story behind nation’s religious collapse

Church attendance in the U.S. is now double the...

All laws rely on some moral authority

Separation of church and state a bad idea I said...

David Warren

Robin Hoodism is on the rise

Once upon a time, and in some periodical publication...

Taking on the Reformation

One of the comforts, for a pundit out of...

The miserly Canadian

Canadians, as everyone should know, are tightwads. This is...

Rediscovering the meaning of Christmas

Christians, or at least the Catholic ones, are supposed...

A vocal truth

In addition to the convenient facts—news that fits effortlessly...

Michael Coren

Police politicization: Law breakers ignored while law-abiding protesters treated like criminals

Within the propaganda and tawdry political theatre that is...

Ideological narcissism: Chief’s hunger strike tough to swallow

While I have some sympathy for Irish republicanism, I...

Fashion over debate: Sonny days ahead if Justin Trudeau gets Liberal leadership nod

The world didn’t end recently, and it’s unlikely to...

Insulting fanatics: They’re the people who make up the legalization campaign

Last week on my television show, we interviewed Jodie...

Shrill backlash to men’s rights advocate

For more than two years I wrote a men’s...

Rory Leishman

SPECIAL: A Letter From Rory Leishman: a critic apologizes to him

Editor’s note:  This is the latest in an ongoing...

Media neglect sources of homegrown Islamist extremism

Following the arrest of three more Canadian citizens on...

Shameful neglect of the mentally ill

We Canadians like to think of ourselves as an...

A case study in poverty and corruption

Over the past 30 years, Angola has developed into...

Canada’s real poverty problem

The Conference Board of Canada ranks Canada’s record on...

Theo Caldwell

Canada’s FATCA Capitulation

As of this past week, the Canada Revenue Agency...

Canada’s Complicity in the US Surveillance State

In Canadian political debate, accusing one’s opponent of advocating...

Of course Canada is more business-friendly than the United States

A recent report from Bloomberg News ranks Canada as...

Toronto Mayor is Not a Victim

I voted for Rob Ford. Normally, I embrace the...

Good luck, America (you’ll need it)

And here I believed that Obamacare, chronic 8 percent...

P T B C

Joel Johannesen
Follow Joel
Latest posts by Joel Johannesen (see all)

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Thursday, January 23, 2025
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“Experts:” Liberals won, so Conservatives need to give up and bend over.

Ronald Reagan would be turning over in his grave if he watched CTV today.

According to the “experts” in the news media, what’s supposed to happen after an election is for the losing party(ies) to just stop being that party, change their principles, change the party platform at its core, and become like the party that won. That pretty much sums up the idiocy I’ve heard on the CBC and CTV news channels all day today in light of Andrew Scheer resigning as leader of the Conservatives.

The political “experts” — even the ones the CTV and CBC trot out as “Conservative” commentators or spokespeople — say that the problem is the Conservative Party isn’t in sync with progressive voters, so the Party — by which they obviously mean the erstwhile conservative folks — needs to drop all that conservative bunk (“bunk” being their principles). The conservative principles don’t line up with the Toronto folks? Poof! Change ’em! Are you still pro-life even after the media scolded you about that twenty eight thousand times? That don’t sell in Toronto-Danforth, baby (pardon the pun), so switch to pro-choice!

Conservatives didn’t win that last one with the principles they ran on, so they should become, well, as Craig Oliver of CTV said, “sophisticated.” Yup, he went there. They should become “sophisticated” is what he actually said.

Paging Hillary Clinton. Deplorables in aisle west!

Craig Oliver: So I think the job of the Conservative Party now, under a new leader, is to try and recapture support in Ontario and Quebec, and in urban Canada. And that requires a sophisticated [his emphasis] national leader; someone who can take the party, and who can forge a new 21st century Conservative message. That’s what they need. Without that, they’ll lose again.

Sure, that did sound suspiciously like an elitist liberal news expert ambiguously suggesting that the venerable old Conservative policies are not only “wrong views” (you know, being conservative and all), but they’re literally unsophisticated. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I thought maybe Oliver just meant a leader who could quote Aristotle or demonstrate proper feng shui decorating techniques or something.

Luckily he was pressed on that word “sophisticated” for some weird reason that surely has nothing to do with a liberal anchor antenna picking up on a signal to encourage Oliver to expand on his hot-take for the Conservatives to abandon their unsophisticated deplorableness.

CTV News Channel anchor Todd van der Heyden: You said the word “sophisticated,” what do you mean by that?

See?

Craig Oliver: Uh I mean somebody who has the right views on social policy for instance, that’s for sure, uh, which Mr. Scheer’s issue wasn’t that he said what he said, uh, it was that, you know, one can respect him for saying whatever he wanted, but his views were out of tune [his emphasis] with the majority of Canadians’ views! People want to vote for people who share their views. And not enough people in the country shared his views! So the Conservative Party had nowhere to go, and wasn’t about to win an election. And it was mainly because of judgements made by Mr. Scheer, and that’s what the party is making him responsible for now.

So clearly, the problem is that the “experts” are out of their minds.

What Oliver seems to mean by “sophisticated” appears to be to change your stripes from conservative to liberal, to get elected.

Pro-life? You unsophisticated rube. Dubious about the climate change cult of hysteria? You unsophisticated Greta-hater. Get with the times, man! I mean person! Change your life’s principles — not because somebody convinced you to change based on science, strong reason, or sound, convincing argument, but because it poll-tests real well in York Centre amongst the trendy millennial set, and it’s what all the academic swells in universities are saying on TV!

Presumably, the Liberals should have changed — into solid pro-life, balance-budget, and climate-change-skeptical conservatives — when Harper was elected in 2011 (with a solid majority unlike the latest Liberal semi-victory). And the NDP… well they should have dropped their entire socialist nonsense soon after they formed as a socialist party, according to Oliver who has never suggested any such thing ever because reasons. That’s the rub: Liberals should never change. Further leftists should also never change. It’s only the Conservatives who need to abort their mission if they lose an election. (And also if they win, as I understand it.)

I thought the role of leader of the party, and the members themselves, was to advocate and advance the party policies and sell the principles to other Canadians based on their soundness, and their morality, and logic, and historical record of success, etc. Not to be poll-takers or populists or stenographers for some temperamental and trendy voters. And certainly not to bend over to liberals when they lose elections. It’s about principles, I thought.

Ronald Reagan lost big before he won huge. He won by doing the exact opposite of what Craig Oliver and other experts suggest. He pleaded with conservatives in a Democratic Party-controlled America to speak, with him, of the values and soundness of traditional conservative principles, and to do it loudly and proudly. Speak in “bold colors, no pale pastels,” he exclaimed. And he practiced what he preached. And he won. And then he won again even bigger. And now he’s a legendary figure and an object lesson in how conservatives win elections.

So the Party — with all its values intact — is just fine. It can win easily. True blue conservative values and principles, contra Craig Oliver and the experts, are right, not “wrong.” They’re sophisticated, even, with all due respect to the insolent Mr. Oliver or those liberals who appear to be intolerant of conservative views. The next leader, and all conservatives, should speak of our good conservative values, and do it in bold colors — not pale pastels again — to win hearts and minds.

Joel Johannesen
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