Team Trudeau

The entourage approaches:

Trudeau has assembled quite the team: Gerald Butts, formerly World Wildlife Fund Canada’s president and CEO; Bob Rae’s former press secretary Kate Monfette; New Brunswick MP and one-time leadership hopeful Dominic LeBlanc.

Organizers describe Trudeau’s team as a flat organization, “just many people working for a common goal, sharing whatever expertise they have.”

I was thinking flat like an old soda. But maybe that's just me.

Over the last few months I've gotten the odd e-mail of criticism, albeit in very genteel terms, that I'm paying way too much attention to Justin Trudeau. Dude, my interlocutors tell me, Justin is just an air-headed mediocrity, an invention of the media that will soon implode. With any luck he'll take what's left of the Liberal Party with him. That was my initial reaction too. A few Shiny Pony jokes. Cracks about his hair. The odd throw-away line about how he inherited his politics from his father and his brains from his mother.

Then I started to get worried. Justin didn't get me nervous, Barack Obama did. If a vacuous non-entity like Obama can fool the electorate of what is supposed to be the Most Right-Wing Nation on Earth, where does that leave us? Sure the Son and Heir is not in the same intellectual league as the American President. But this is Canada and our MSM is more easily dazzled. Recall that they fell in love with his father because he wore sandals. JFK at least had the yachting thing going for him.

Justin himself is not dangerous. I think pretty much everyone understands that angle. Without the famous last name he'd be eking out an existence as a substitute teacher in suburban Toronto or Montreal, complete with 15 year old Honda and pierced feminist girlfriend. The Left and Right in Canada may disagree on many things, but it is understood by both sides that Justin is a prop. The Left sees him as a way of revitalizing their failed and quite literally bankrupt ideology, the Right as their legendary bête noire returned in teenyboper form. The fainting tweens think of Justin worship as a way of engaging in ordinary youthful celebrity obsession, while pretending to think seriously about politics.

Everybody gets something for nothing. The modern North American dream.

While Justin is a few years older than me, I have an irresistible urge to call him a boy. Probably because that's what my father and people of his generation call him. Not a young man, which is something different, but a boy. The slight effeminacy, the histrionic speeches, the petulance when asked slightly awkward questions and the conviction that he is the hero of a grand drama now unfolding. These are boyish traits. When a boy is about to be crowned, you naturally start looking at the courtiers.

Their agenda will be far more interesting than anything the Dauphin has to say.

Comments

[nomdeblog]

“When a boy is about to be crowned, you naturally start looking at the courtiers. Their agenda will be far more interesting than anything the Dauphin has to say.”

Who are our courtiers? Our Valarie Jarretts and David Axelrods? Who are the people who actually run this puppet show? That is the worry because we are not immune to an empty chair getting elected too.

The Liberals who are now running the show have absolutely no qualms about first getting a charismatic messiah positioned as leader and then start looking around for some stuff produced by other people’s money to give to the modern dreamers. They don’t even have an ideology any more, they just want the power to give away stuff, redistribute and create a big dependent class to ensure they stay in power.

This is all possible because the chattering class who aren’t necessarily enthralled with Justin are highly motivated to get rid of Harper who they will tell you they “hate”. When you ask why? They look blank and then come up with things like “he prorogued”. When you say the Liberals prorogued 70 times in the last century they look blank again.

So beware the return of Trudeau who will re-launch big nationalized schemes like Kyoto to redistribute money and make things “fair”.

Finally, my Liberal buddies say Martha Hall Finlay is right of center fiscally but that she doesn’t stand a chance against Justin because (paraphrasing) she’s as dull as Harper. Competence does not register on the prerequisites of the Liberals lusting for power.

[Cytotoxic]

"So beware the return of Trudeau who will re-launch big nationalized schemes like Kyoto to redistribute money and make things “fair”."

Oh I don't know. Trudeau endorsed Chinese investment, making him more FDI-friendly than Harper. He endorsed the oilsands. Granted, he is not for the Gateway pipeline.

We already have big national schemes and redistribute money to makes things 'fair', so...shrug.

[nomdeblog]

“Trudeau endorsed Chinese investment, making him more FDI-friendly than Harper”

What that makes him is more statist friendly. But why would he have concerns about that given the NEP in his genes? Petro Canada or Petro China, what ta heck? And as you mention, he says he’s for oilsands (when standing in the West versus Quebec) but he’s against transporting them.

But we’re getting way too analytical about Justin. It doesn’t matter what he’s for or against; all that matters is what do the “courtiers” have in mind for him.

[Cytotoxic]

Favoring investment from a foreign state-owned corporation is nothing like favoring one's own SOE. Your position is sinophobia dressed in the talk of free-markets.

[nomdeblog]

Maybe you’re right Cy , maybe we should be more worried about an Ottawa NEP than a ChiCom NEP in Beijing. But both worry me. We should put some rules in place to deal with State ownership because it doesn’t behave like the private sector’s motives which are more predictable.

Those who claim to believe in free market capitalism are letting their principles slip instead of resisting state ownership of production; that model won’t work by either our own governments or ChiCom agencies. If the state of China wants to buy our resources let them sign up for supply contracts.

Meanwhile the real agenda of the Liberal Party has been exposed this week with their anti-energy sector attitude fully revealed:

David McGuinty, says anyone who believes in energy sector innovation is a "shill" and should "go back home" to Alberta.

Justin Trudeau says Canada is better off when Quebecers run the country, “This country — Canada — it belongs to us.”

His hatred toward the energy sector and Albertans is now on full display while he hypocritically runs around the country saying we must be less divisive. Shades of the empty chair running the US who was going to heal divisions.

Sure politicians say things locally that aren’t intended for the full country to hear, like the horribly divisive Harper who said he hopes the Stamps beat the Argos on Sunday. Yet some awkward things are said that nevertheless need to be said openly; like maybe Alberta should firewall itself from the Eastern socialists and that the Atlantic coast had been a culture of defeat (no longer totally true as the Newfies are contributing to McGuinty’s Ontario.

Bring on the Liberal leadership debates, it’s good for the country and fun to watch the biased Parliamentary Press Gallery cheerleading the Liberals.

PS
Martha Hall Findlay said, “[Mr. Trudeau] is only one person. He does not speak for Liberals. Indeed, the Liberal Party is in the midst of a process to find somebody who will.”

It’s too bad she’s as dull as PMSH, she’s by far the best Liberal leadership candidate. But Liberals and the PPG want charisma versus competence.