Fwd: Scheer Nonsense

As I write this, the Conservative Parliamentary Party is deciding whether or not under the "Rules" to remove Scheer. Now, I'm not a Scheer Fan (who is?) but the matter seems premature. First, he won the popular vote and  gained 27% in seats while the Liberals lost seats and got only 33% while the NDP were halved and no one is talking about Leader Disposal there. Second, the precedents for waiting until he gets another kick at the can are ample although results of such patience mixed.

Bad examples, TUrner and Stanfield (who got two kicks and almost won on the second try. Turner doubled his caucus). Good: Harris and Harper. There seems ample precedent for being forgiving (and most of the past examples had much worse first tries).

Third, who to replace him with? Really, who is that, especially with mulroney and MacKay apparently counting themselves out?

Fourth and most important, I don't care what the Chong Law or the Caucus rules say, it's profoundly undemocratic (especially when you have an automatic review in April anyway. It took a year and a half to replace Harper. Even if one has to wait until April for the Membership to decide, you'll have a new leader likely no later than a year from now.). In any case, the People, your people, should decide not 120 MP's to remove a duly elected Party Leader barely two weeks after an election. If nothing else will convince a reptile thinking about this, it will be bad political optics. Also, what's stopping Scheer running again for the Leadership if he's removed by them? If people are so sure that he is crap, then it will not be hard to force his review vote (especially as Quebec and Ontario get at least 60% of the votes on this and seem the most disenchanted) down below the 67% Clark got when he decided to step down (and then ran again anyway and damn near got back in).

But the real example for a thinking MP should be Harris. I would explicitly make as a condition of my voting against the immediate removal that he change. Meaning, like Harris, he needs to see that politics is a team sport. He needs to work with his caucus and the membership, as Harris did, to rebuild the platform so that it is coherent, recognizably conservative, simple and deals with the real problems of the country honestly and in a way that is relevant to ordinary people. Harris did it with the COmmon Sense Revolution and won.

Now to be sure as an MP I would not make any ideological demands at this point. The policy direction of the Party should be in the hands of the Leader, his new Team (yes, the present negligent, craven and unimaginative bunch that advised him should go), the Caucus and the Membership.. But Mr. Scheer can and must change starting with a pledge to include the Caucus in all aspects of strategy and policy and ultimately the membership, too, or he should step down for someone else who will and save us all the pain of a long drawn out and ugly leadership war.

If he undertakes this openly, he will easily win the Review but also start the process of giving Canadians a strong, compelling Conservative voice built on those conservative values of freedom and tolerance that he so eloquently extolled on Election Night. Let the New and Improved Scheer begin today!