Editor:
Re: Blemishes found everywhere as parties roll into fall election, Community Comment, Aug. 8
With the date of the next federal election still shrouded in mystery, I salute Nicholas Wong for bravely predicting that it "approaches with a certain sense of inevitability."
In the first installment of his incisive 2019 election analysis, he warns that Andrew Scheer perilously toes a "tightrope" ("across a razor's edge," no less), risking association with the dark forces of Darth Donald: "With...Trump-style conservatives raising torches down south, [he] has to fight not to be seen as a white supremacist, a mere oil sands cheerleader or whatever it means to be called ‘far-right’ in this day and age."
Of course, all the obvious indicators are there: Scheer's white, he's male and he's a tad to the right of the Cuba-plated clown car of Democrat presidential candidates. Mind you, given that white supremacists exist primarily in the fevered imaginations of the far-left, the Conservative leader might just pull off an inside straight and convince enough Canadians he isn't a neo-Nazi.
Obsessed as they are by racial divisions and animosities, lefties need to be told they don't get a free pass to label conservatives -- particularly one as milquetoast moderate as Scheer -- as white supremacists (especially as a lot of conservatives are people of colour). They don't get to go there anymore. First, because it's absurd. Second, because it's (um, what's the word?)... racist.
The left has overplayed the racist card forever, but policy-wise that's all it's got. And they really step in it when they forget that equating the Conservative leader with white supremacy is equating all Conservative voters as racists. We're not too keen on that, and all the keener to get out the vote.
And even if Scheer really was a closet Klan-kitted racist, it seems to me that Canadians could do with a bit more "cheerleading" for one of this country's foremost wealth and job-producing industries. Even if -- or, better, because -- it drives the Chicken Little eco-loons even more bananas.
Gary Martin
