Yes, it's in the Nazi Post, but clearly even they've got some issues with how Captain Outhouse poorly navigated his campaign. Here's the scoop on what they reported this morning:
A group representing Conservatives of Chinese descent is urging Erin O’Toole to resign as federal leader, charging that his call for a tougher approach to China alienated Chinese-Canadian voters and cost the party three seats in last month’s election.
The Chinese Canadian Conservative Association is advocating a less-confrontational stance toward Beijing, saying immigrants from the Mainland don’t like the Communist Party but still feel affection for China as a nation.
It's not so much that China the government isn't worthy of criticism. It's that Urine O'Stoole didn't heed the admonition from Teddy Roosevelt about measured diplomacy: speak softly and carry a big stick. Instead, all he did was lumber about like a pygmy version of the orange elephant downstairs, a bull(shit artist) in a China shop thrashing about and tooting his own horn.
On a serious note did Erin gain a damn thing from his rhetoric? Did Indo- Canadians swing to him out of that community’s anger against China? Nope. So it’s clear then politicizing this issue to the point of accusing LPC of being CCP collaborators did nothing.
And why didn’t this work? Because much to the fury of the Terry [Glavin]s and the Steven [Chase]s of the press Canadians constitute one of the most educated electorates on the planet. They are capable of to feeling strongly on an issue disagreeing with the govt but understanding their motivations.
Justin Trudeau meanwhile, went with a more mature, measured approach. (Speak moistly and carry a hockey stick.) Disdainful of Chairman Xi's "hostage diplomacy" while still respectful of Chinese Canadians, all the more so amid the vitriol they've faced during the pandemic. For this he was utterly excoriated and even found the government mired in McCarthy-esque committee inquisitions — particularly at the farcical "Canada/China committee" that O'Toole himself motioned to create at the start of the previous government, most likely as posturing for the leadership race that he was looking to get in.
Things got so bad that the (now-departed) chair of the Public Health Agency of Canada was actually hauled before the chamber, to be publicly humiliated for refusing to play along with conspiracy theories about "Chinese spies" purportedly "leaking" from a Winnipeg lab to the infamous Wuhan lab where, some say, COVID itself emerged from. That proved to be the straw that broke the panda's back, and before you know it, we were headed into an election. And Dumbfuck O'Toole has signalled that he has every intent of pursuing that conspiracy theory in this parliament as well. Einstein's definition of insanity.
O’Toole was tweeting about China on an almost daily basis, to the point of weirdly obsessive. It was more than being tough, it was dog whistle politics and painfully obvious his real motivation. Again, the disproportionate attention belied the true game he was playing.
—Steve V (@FarAndWide) on Twitter
Superficially, the numbers look like not much changed, but below the surface they did, and this is just one example. Trudeau may have returned with another minority government, but the Cons themselves lost a constituency that had, up until that point, proven to be stalwarts in their corner. All that MAGA crap backfired and now it's going to be a tough haul for the Trumpish Tories to win Chinese Canadians back. (Moreover, had he won the election and committed to his aggressive approach, the Two Michaels probably would have been killed. Instead, Trudeau got them home and Erin McCarthy was humiliated.)
It remains to be seen whether or not this call for resignation ends up convincing the party brass that moving up his leadership review by the membership is warranted. After all, this only vindicates Bert Chen, the member of the party's national council who started a petition right after the election demanding just that, a move for which he was rebuffed by the backroom operatives and even threatened with expulsion from that body. (UPDATE: They kicked him out!)
No purging of the dissents going on here…
The ONLY Chinese-Canadian member of the Conservative National Council [has been] SUSPENDED by the party for 60 days. He was the one who started a petition for Erin O'Toole to resign. Conservative war against Chinese-Canadians continues.
3 members abstained indicates National Council is not in agreement with Erin O’Toole leadership. Is the Leadership of Erin O’Toole getting embroiled in Canadian ethnic & multicultural wars?
—Clinton P. Desveaux (former Harper staffer) on Twitter
The defeated MPs, meanwhile (who are of Chinese ethnicity themselves), are doubling down on their assertion that it wasn't "tough on China" rhetoric that cost them their seats, but "Chinese government propaganda," a notion that has been fastidiously debunked by actual data. Nevertheless, they persisted; they insist that Canadians, including Chinese Canadians, want more sabre-rattling and all that's needed is better comms, not a softening of their approach or any sort of pivot at all.
I've said this since LAST YEAR Chinese Canadians DO NOT TRUST Erin O'Toole and losing THREE held seats with high [numbers of] Chinese Canadians was the result.
As I told our blogger friend ottlib, the situation that the Conspiracy Party of Canada finds itself in is an indication that they're the caboose of the GOP's crazy train. They'll reach that destination sooner rather than later whether O'Toole stays or not. There are voters from visible minority groups in the U.S. who might be open to considering the party or who have voted for them previously, whether due to economic reasons or even cultural/religious conservatism (the old joke being, the GOP/CPC are a big tent of gay racists and brown homophobes, who all want lower taxes). They end up voting for the Democrats (or Liberals/NDP) because they are put off by the abject, vitriolic racism. (Not all of them, mind you; as I wrote earlier about fickle Indigenous voters in Canada, there's always a subset willing to cast their lot with the face-eating leopards.) The Liberals are now in a good position to pick those voters up.
So where does this leave Very Smart General™ Erin McCain? Well, if he wants to win back his brownshirt troops, he's going to have to "Don" an orange wig and start accusing Trudeau out loud in the HoC of spreading the Wu Kung Flu. He could do a WWE clothesline to Michael Chong during Question Period, and then make a racist gesture by tugging at his eyelids and sticking out his teeth. The crazy base is only going to want a Trump even more as the Republican primaries start to heat up, and the mango madman returns to assert his control over the compromised party. Some forty per cent of the CPC cult wants a MAGA messiah of their own, and it's not clear whether the tool man is going to be able to convince them that's who he is. Even though this is still very much the case:
