Red Toryism and the fall of Erin O'Toole with Wyatt Claypool

Wyatt Claypool is the co-founder and operator of The National Telegraph, a publication focused on investigating political and bureaucratic corruption, and deep political analysis. Wyatt is finishing a Master's in Public Policy and has a personal focus on marketing socially conservative ideas to a broad audience.

In this episode we discuss red toryism and how Erin O'Toole's light on Conservatism platform contributed to his downfall and threw the Conservative Party of Canada into another tail spin

Find him at twitter.com/wyatt_claypool

Transcript

Russell: Russell here with the Canadian Conservative podcast. And in the studio today, I have Wyatt Claypool from the National Telegraph. Wyatt, can you tell me a bit about yourself? And then tell me about the National Telegraph. What is it and what do they do?

Wyatt Claypool: Of course. Thanks for having me on, Russell. And so I guess the National Telegraph kind of fits fairly well into the normal Canadian independent media space. We're a little bit smaller, don't put out as many articles. So we kind of focused a lot on if we ever get sort of whenever we can do what we can sort I guess our ideal story, if I was to say, is usually about political or bureaucratic corruption, whether it be within political parties or whether it be like one of our big kind of story series. AHS, bureaucratic corruption in terms of mismanagement of ICU beds. I personally also do just a lot of political commentary. The National Tower graph is obviously more of like a right wing kind of a publication. We tend to be very, I guess, focused on we're not like populist, but we're more so like, I guess you could call us, even though it's a toxic word these days, more neoconservative, very focused on more active foreign policy kind of takes. We tend to be like, I'm a little bit more socially conservative, even though my co owner Daniel Borderman is more socially liberal. But overall we tend to have a more sort of blue Tory perspective about things. And all of us kind of have our backgrounds over at the post Millennial, and we eventually left or were fired in my case, and sort of started the National Telegraph out of spite. But over the last three years we've had very good growth, considering the fact that our budget's been $5 and a ham sandwich. But I think I'm pretty happy with where we've come from. Basically nothing.

Russell: Now, I follow you on Twitter, and I noticed that the National Telegraph tends to get a lot of hate. And where do you think that hate gets directed from and why do you think that people react to your content in such a manner?

Wyatt Claypool: It depends on where the hate is coming from. Sometimes the hate would come from. The funny thing is, it often comes from PPC people. Even though in 2021, me and Daniel Boardman were very openly supportive of the PPC because we had thought that the Conservative Party under Aaron O'Toole, if successful and if it formed government. One would probably only win. A minority government would be quickly replaced by another liberal government and two would not be a significant improvement over the liberals. To justify watering down the ideology of the Conservative Party, but you get a lot of PPC people who don't like us because we'll criticize the fact that we don't see Maxime Bernier as a competent operator, leader of the PPC. The infrastructure of the parties never really come through. It feels like it's still just a party, mostly based on Twitter. But then the other group of haters tends to be hyper progressive people who see us as like conservative party stooges or whatever, even though we've never gotten a dime from any large organization. It's basically just me and Daniel funding it and then maybe a couple of our sort of frequent readers or viewers who will give us some money here and there and we don't even really fundraise all that much. But there's one particular man on Twitter who hates my guts. Max Fawcett, who works with the National Observer and he's from Alberta, and for some reason I can always tell he's doom scrolling my Twitter. Because even though he stopped following me after I mentioned that, it's sort of funny he follows me and hates my guts, I can still tell he sort of follows me just to sort of direct his followers towards me. But, yeah, I think the National Telegraph has always sort of had a little bit of this hate following despite us not being a very big publication, because we're very not to put in a bad way, we're very earnest. About being very hawkish on foreign policy, which I find with the online crowd these days is a very good way of having you get, I guess, mobbed by sort of like Twitter populists or whatever.

Russell: Now tell me a little bit about yourself. Who is Wyatt Claypool? Like when you present yourself to the world and you tell people who you are, who are you presenting out to the world and what is your background, where do you come from? And why is talking about foreign policy and politics so important to you?

Wyatt Claypool: That's the funny thing is I always hate talking about myself. Not that it's a bad question to ask because I never really formulate it. It's so generic. I'm going to start off like I'm 24, I just turned 24, I'm finishing my master's degree in Public Policy, have an undergrad in Policy Studies at Mount Royal. I got into journalism just because it was one of those things where I listened to. I, of course, watch Ben Shapiro like any young conservative does. But I used to watch him not even watch. I mean, I used to listen to him when he was on Seattle radio and whatnot back when I happened to be in Montana and picked up a couple of the broadcasts at one point. But I was one of those people where it's just if I don't end up engaging in journalism, if I don't end up engaging in politics and I don't talk about foreign policy and all this stuff, I just go crazy. Or I would just end up walking up to a family member or friend and just start downloading every single thought I have about something. So I ended up getting involved in journalism first because when I became the campus conservative President, simply because I was the vice President. After the President left, I got invited to go work at the Post Millennial. And even though I basically got paid nothing, I still just really loved being able to get my own thoughts out there. So after I had left the Post Millennial, it was like a craving and a need so to be able to put out thoughts and do reporting. So I started the National Telegraph with a set of other people. Some of them left, some of them stayed. And now the core of the publication is mostly just myself and Daniel Bordman. And since then I've gotten more into video content and whatnot. And I guess my background too, if I was to go into an ideological sort of side of things, is I'm a socially conservative, more hawkish on foreign policy type of a person because I would define myself as well. Not only am I like a born and grand Christian, but I would say that politically I'm a very antimoral relativist type of an individual. I'm not a libertarian. I tend to believe that there is an objective good in the world. Obviously I believe that being an actual Christian. So I kind of have always been the type of person where I always feel the need to be able to sort of wade into issues. Not just because I want to stand up for rights and freedoms and stuff like that, but I actually want to stand up for a more fundamental moral right at the same know, like a moral imperative. Yeah. Like, in the sense that that's where I've always never been a libertarian in any way, because I don't really consider and this has actually been a debate going on with Anthony Coke on Twitter today, if you've been following any of that, where he was talking about why he doesn't like libertarianism because he doesn't believe that the fundamental moral value is consent. Because there can be a lot of terrible things done with consent. And I believe that for conservatism to flourish, we have to aspire higher than just wanting there to be consent for terrible things happening. We should be wanting rights and freedoms and having absolute freedom of speech and whatnot. At the same time we should all prosper to say nicer things. At the same time we should all aspire to be better people. Which is why, to a certain extent, I've never really agreed fully with a populist crowd, because it tends to be more about even though I agree with the things that they're advocating for on a personal level, they tend to advocate for more selfish freedom. Not I want freedom, and I also want to do good things with the freedom I get.

Russell: My thing that I've noticed a lot with conservatives is that there's a lot of fractures right now and my opinion has been that everyone wants their brand of conservatism to be the brand. And so if someone is slightly more progressive conservative, then they're ousted as just being another liberal hack that's playing at being conservative, whereas someone that's conservative but they're atheist isn't a real conservative because a real conservative has Judeo Christian values. And I've really seen this sphere where everyone's fractured in the conservative movement because everyone wants their brand to be number one, whereas the liberals and the progressives, they may disagree on lots of things, but they are united on one thing the total and utter destruction of their ideological opponents. So how do we bridge this gap, in your opinion?

Wyatt Claypool: Yeah, I've never been some sort of political supremacist. Because, again, you can still want everyone to adopt your ideas, but it's more so the perspective that you come from that should everyone by default enter the room believing what I think? Or should I have to work hard and be able to convince them that what I believe and what my values are should be also their beliefs and values? That's where I more so come from. It. This is where I've always and we'll probably talk about this as we go on. This is why I don't like campaigning, where you just sort of design a set of values that you think a lot of people already have, rather than just running on what you actually believe and what you can better advocate for, because you genuinely do believe it, and then convincing people that you're right. I never like the idea that either you kind of try to bully people into just accepting your premises right away or just sort of artificializing yourself to try and hold all the positions you think enough people already have that they'll just automatically agree with you.

Russell: That's the problem with modern politics. When you look at the topic of psychopathy, the psychopath is the master of impression management. They can't actually feel emotion, they can't feel things like regular people do, so they have to impression manage their way through life. And I find a lot of politicians have taken up this mantle where they just impression manage everything. It's all about presenting based on polling and based on internal data sets.

Wyatt Claypool: Definitely.

Russell: Yeah, like a focus group says, hey, everyone likes it. People like it better when Pierre doesn't wear glasses and wears contacts instead. Yeah, so he takes the glasses off and he wears contacts. Right. And he gets a new haircut type thing. And I can guarantee you that's something that happened well, I can't guarantee it, but most likely it happened as a result of a focus group of some sort where people were pulled, would you like this better or this better? And then they're presenting it out for the public. But that's all impression management. That's not real, that's not authentic.

Wyatt Claypool: And some of that could be well motivated that you're thinking that, hey, people have an impression of me, so I'm going to change up my appearance a little bit and then even if I'm delivering the same message, maybe people listen to a bit different. But yeah, I don't really believe that that ever really works in an impactful way that if we basically just kind of rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic of it, somehow we're going to have a different outcome. At the end of the day, there needs to be a fundamental messaging change. You have to sort of figure out how to message it better. You don't change the message or you don't change the appearance to make people sort of buy the same thing that they had already rejected or the thing that just hadn't compelled them enough yet. Although the funny thing with the Conservatives, I think Polyev and the Conservatives are doing actually a pretty good job. And I think in time his popularity or Polyev's popularity will grow. I think she's just still a new leader. He hasn't even been a leader for a full year. A lot of people don't even know who he is yet. So I think that they're being a little bit jumpy at the moment trying to make him at 50% approval tomorrow. Whereas it will naturally happen maybe in two years, that his popularity will be better. But some people get a little bit antsy and insecure about the fact that they're not at their destination right away.

Russell: It seems to me like politicians these days, we're taking on an early Republican view of and this is across the spectrum of political activity where our politicians kind of have to be like celebrities and that like Ronald Reagan, right? Cowboy Ronnie in the White House type thing. We have our celebrity politician. We have Justin Trudeau. He's a celebrity and that he's the son of a former prime minister and that he likes to play dress up. He's Canada's first black prime minister. I mean, we got lots of things going for us and in my opinion, he's really no different than Trump, who's a celebrity as well, right? And it's almost this thing of if some guy got up on the stage and he had great policies and he could speak to people and he really could affect a lot of change, but he maybe didn't dress the way people liked or something like that. People are so tuned into this idea where they want their politician to be almost like this movie esque idea of what a politician looks like from like 30, 40, 50 years ago. Like clean cut, suit, wearing very specific mannerisms, and they've all perfected it. You'll see them when they're new at their job and then you'll see them after a few years and it's like they've all perfected the set of mannerisms that they think attracts people to their cause.

Wyatt Claypool: This sounds so weird. And this is maybe one of my more heterodox takes that this is where I think not looking like the clean cut, attractive politician actually helps you more than trying to look like Trudeau or trying to kind of become that JFK kind of like I think that the biggest mistake Ted Cruz ever made in his political career was growing the beard. Because the thing is that actually genericized, the way he looks. Ted Cruz is a weird looking guy at the same time, Ted Cruz before the beard was unmistakably Ted Cruz. And the thing is, every single and you remembered him far better. Whereas I actually think it's a big mistake to try and sort of be less eccentric and be more milk toast. Not that you should court eccentricities, but if you have them, you shouldn't shy away from the fact that you kind of dress a certain way or you kind of look a certain way or you talk a certain way. Because eventually because everyone has family members that are like that and they love those family members. So why can't a politician kind of court the same sort of public appreciation that they're kind of this not wild and wacky figure, but they're authentically themselves. We always talk about being authentically yourself, but as soon as you're in politics, don't be yourself at all. Be a man who could sell something on live television or do not show up at uh. And frankly, I think the funny thing with Get, like, I'm not trying to go after him anyway. I find that when he took off the glasses, he looked older. And I don't think they really thought about that is that I think that they're trying to go away from his image. When he's in Parliament and he's grilling trudeau and he seems very intense and negative. And to a certain extent, sometimes when people do wear glasses, they seem more squinty and they seem more kind of critical. Like, people literally will put on reading glasses to scrutinize something so he seems like he's scrutinizing when he has his glasses on. So I can understand the image theory of taking the glasses off, but I don't think it's actually beneficial. One, again, I think it makes him look older. And two, I think it just makes it more it takes it makes it take a longer time for people to get comfortable and used to him because you've now changed up the image that people are used to seeing in all the news article thumbnails. I tried to make a thumbnail the other day. There's only like two images of him without glasses you can find. I guarantee both of them are copyrighted. So hopefully I don't get those article thumbnails taken down.

Russell: I have to agree with you because when I first saw him without the glasses on, to be honest, I didn't recognize him for a couple seconds. I actually didn't recognize him because the glasses are iconic. Pierre when you think you think he's got those kind of little bit thicker rim glasses, that kind of makes his look and so when he didn't have him on for a second there, I actually didn't recognize him. And I was okay. Yeah, that's Pierre. And I was, wow. Like, it does make a bit of a difference when he doesn't have them on. And I think he also changed up kind of his style, the way he just dresses in general and that as well. And it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but I kind of get nerd. Like you said, look at Cretchian. Like, everyone knew Jean Cretcian because of the kind of that mouth kind of thing he had going on and the way he.

Wyatt Claypool: Is. And nobody remembers George H. W. Bush because George HW. Bush was the most generic man who's ever lived. And that is a problem. I don't think that anything that Polyup's team is sort of advising him on is going to hurt him. I just think that they think they're making decisions that are winning decisions when there's lots of different things that they could be doing that I think that would be far more decisive in trying to secure the next election than sort of image appearances. And again, this is where we're probably going to go into red Toryism and the philosophy of certain past conservatives that we both disagree with, or I assume we both disagree with, and sort of where I think the Conservative Party should be kind of moving in a certain direction in order to win elections. We'll probably get into it later, but I'll at least throw out the name of Premier Blaine Higgs in New Brunswick as someone who's not a particularly inspiring politician. At the same time, is just taking a couple hard stances, has wildly increased his popularity from someone who used to be literally the most disliked premier in all of Canada.

Russell: He took a stance, and that's rare in today's politics. He just simply took a stance and he's not budging on it. He doesn't care how many Screeching harpies show up at his front door or show up to the front door of legislature. He doesn't care about those things. He took a hardline stance, and that's actually pretty rare these days, where and he's sticking to it through thick and thin, even his own party members that are turning on him. He doesn't care. And that's such a rare thing.

Wyatt Claypool: Think about it this way, too, is that Premier Blaine Higgs after he made changes to policy seven one three? As a quick aside, I actually think a lot of the seven one three stuff was heavily influenced by Chris Austin, who's a Baptist pastor who was the former leader of the People's Alliance Party of New Brunswick, and now he's, of course, in the cabin of the PC government as the Public Safety minister. I think he's kind of been the moral backbone of the New Brunswick PC party that's sort of gotten them actually to take this issue seriously. But when it comes to Blaine Higgs, what he's proving and what he's proving is that when you stand on an issue that people are passionate about. You're naturally going to bring a lot of public support to you, that it doesn't matter how controversial the media tries to paint an issue, if the public support is on your side, if you don't blink, it will always eventually pay. And I think another problem that the Blaine Higgs situation is exposed is all the people going after him in his parties are the presidents of EDAs. It's EDA boards and it's a couple of members of his cabinet, the PC party base, and even the People's Alliance base who's probably moving over to Higgs these days. Those people 100% support Higgs. But the thing is that people who spend a little bit too much time in executive roles in parties, I find tend to get very liberal opinions about things. It's not because there's something inherently liberal about party leadership, it's just those people tend to take media coverage and public perception and things that they hear from experts and analysts extremely seriously. So they end up kind of losing touch with what the average person cares about. And the average person is a passionate voter. They vote on issues that they feel passionate about. They don't vote because the packaging was really nice. And I like how he released that 50 page plan that really had ten points for every area of policy. Nobody cares. And again, that's the red Tory kind of idea of how politics should work. And we were going to go into, I guess, how we both define red toriism and to maybe give sort of like an initial in a nutshell kind of a definition. I think red toriism is the idea that you can somehow average everything into the perfect candidate, into the perfect policy, that there's nothing that conservatism is kind of overrated, and it's this kind of wonkish cobbled together 50 page report that the average voter is looking for to show that you're really serious. It's kind of this faux seriousness, faux expertise that people really care about, not passionate political stances.

Russell: For me, red tourism, it's milk toast, right? It's the inability to take a hardline stance on things. It tends to take conservative values and water them down, but then still try to package them as well. This is the best we're going to be able to do. And I mean, we talked about red tourism. I look at Aaron O'Toole's green energy policy that he was touting so much, and to me that's perfect. Red tourism sounds great if you're living in Ontario and you're an Ontario moderate conservative, maybe, or maybe a little bit more left leaning conservative. But it's wildly offensive to people living out west who produce that energy and actually that's their livelihood. And to me, that's the idea to me of kind of red tourism. It's still a slow progression towards overall liberalism and we live in a liberal society. Consider most people even like a classical conservative, and that most conservatives, even the libertarians, the freedom movement is not what I would consider even a classic conservative stance. Freedom and the Charter of Rights and all that sort of stuff is still based in some form of liberalism. And that if we were going really classic conservatism that would be upholding the status quo of the monarchy even, and everyone having their place in a society and that's the way it's going to be.

Wyatt Claypool: I guess maybe this is a better way of even sort of reintroducing myself. This is why I would consider myself a neoconservative. And even though neoconservatism has a bad name because people just throw out the term neocon to define things that they don't like, I'm a neocon because I don't believe that just upholding whatever status quo that the Liberals left us with is enough. So I consider myself, in kind of the words of Douglas Murray, like I'm a revolutionary conservative. Not in the violent, radical sort of sense, but in the sense that the liberal standards need to be overturned and they need to be replaced by something that actually values morals, that rejects moral relativism, that values kind of small government that values the family unit, that values the free expression of religious beliefs and free speech and whatnot, but also wants to harness those ideals and rights in order to pursue good things on the individual level, not just saying that we live in a libertarian society. So do whatever you want. We're all going to be libertine about it. Yeah, you can do it. You shouldn't, though. And that's where I think that's kind of also my philosophy. But to go back to kind of like the red Tory beliefs in a certain sense and the funny thing is that they tend to be the people who and again, in the case of Blaine Higgs, this is being proven out they tend to be the people who dominate party hierarchies. So it doesn't matter that Andrew Shearer won by watering down his personality and becoming this generic kind of just conservative here to tell you about all the cool tax credits they might give you. And it doesn't matter that Aaron O'Toole lost fully embracing the red Tory theory of politics. Somehow, if we just whittle down our beliefs to being as mild as possible, we're going to attract the quote unquote average voter. The average voter does not exist. And I hate this idea that there is such a thing as an average voter because it's the way that the Conservatives always trick themselves into losing an election. Because they trick themselves into thinking that if 60% of Canadians say one of their top three issues is taxes, well, those 60% just mean that they want a couple of tax breaks. They want $200 for installing Led lights in their house. They want a small reduction in the carbon tax. No, if 60% people say that they care about tax, it's because they want a tax cut. They want cuts to spending. They want you to eliminate taxes. There's no person who cares about an issue but just wants you to make a little tweak, a couple of tweaks over here and there. And that's where I don't care about Aaron O'Toole's 50 page plan when he was running for leadership. I don't care that he's going to make little changes here and there around the edges. That's not compelling to anybody because people, even if they don't seem like they're particularly political, there's a couple of issues that they're passionate about. People are either zeros on an issue or they're eights. And then there's some people who are eleven s and they're a little scary, but most people are not. That right in the middle four and a half. They're not four and a half out of ten on an issue where they kind of care about it, but they could take or leave it. But whenever you over pull something, whenever you do too many focus groups, you tend to invent this idea that someone just wants to hear you say, yeah, I don't care about any social issues. I'm just here to give you a couple of extra bucks in your pocket and I hope you're having a great day. It's like that's not compelling to anyone.

Russell: I was rewatching his victory speech when he became party leader and I realized what I thought was one of his fatal flaws.

Wyatt Claypool: That being Aaron O'Toole. Right.

Russell: Watching Aaron O'Toole when he took over as party leader and he was having his big speech in front of the party and he laid out like his five point plan. He was talking to, like it was a list of things and I was rewatching it, looking at it, and I thought, I think I have a good idea of why that didn't resonate. Number one, the actual stuff he was proposing is not what conservatives really want. I was listening to it and he was going I was like, this sounds a lot like Justin Trudeau. Like, oh, we're going to build more vaccine manufacturing plants and that. And I was like, that's not what conservatives are asking. You know, talking a bit about his energy policy, I just realized, because he made like five key points and I thought, there it is right there. If you're going to be in a minority government where you are not the ruling party and you're going to come out with this big platform, like really big platform, you've already failed, pick two key issues and hammer those freaking issues as hard as you can.

Wyatt Claypool: This is the big disconnect that people in the media who are supposedly conservatives have with peer polyev. Andrew coyne obviously hates polyv's guts. He literally calls them like a radical or an extremist or something like that. Not that he says that polyv is going around like lighting things on fire or anything. It's more so like, oh, he's dogmatic. And then he criticizes him because he doesn't lay down his. Ideas in this 200 point plan the way Aaron Vatul does. And it's because even though you and I could probably find issues that we have with polyev polyev, even though he's not putting out giant platform planks and sort of like putting things out in long reports, he articulates conservatism. And that's why he was extremely popular in the conservative leadership race, because even though he's not saying on day two, I will be doing this to the CRTC and we're going to be changing this tax law or whatever, the thing is that he's articulating someone who understands that we need less government and we want more freedoms. We want a government that's efficient at the same time that we don't hate the government, we just think that it actually needs to be focused on its role and it shouldn't be bleeding into the public, into the sort of private space. And it's like, yes, he's not telling you exactly point for point what he's going to be doing, because this is the thing that I had people freak out at me recently. Like, Paulio doesn't have any platform points. It's like he does. You just have to listen up. You just don't speak real conservative. So that's where leftists and people like Andrew Coyne, who's supposedly not a leftist, get confused.

Russell: Well, it's not only that, but like Aeronautool, if he would have had one, let's say he only put up one thing on that screen and he said, this is the issue, we are going to make it our big issue. I feel like he would have been in a much better stance if he would have had one issue and he said, this is the issue that conservatives, we are going to push this issue to the nth degree. We are going to hold everyone to account. We're going to burn every bridge along the way to ensure that we deal with this and use the fire from the burning to light our way. And I feel like he would have gathered a lot more support. Instead, like you said, he had this big milk toast list of this is what we're going to do, it sounded very moderate and the more he droned on about it, like I said, I watched it earlier, the more he droned on about it, I was thinking, well, you're not going to be able to do that. There's no way you're going to be able to do that. You don't have the numbers, you don't have the backing for that.

Wyatt Claypool: I think at the end of the.

Russell: Day, people just felt like he was lying to them. And then watching the CBC interview with the National Committee person that started the petition for his removal and he was chen. Yeah, Bert Chen. Even, even he know he lied to us and he didn't meet our expectations. And I think that is because he came out with this wide ranging platform and then he didn't really take a.

Wyatt Claypool: Hardcore stance on thing with a here's the thing with a long, very bloated platform, and I guarantee you this was the motivation behind O'Toole is he thought he could put out this very long platform. A lot of people would read it. Spoiler alert, nobody read it. And that because he has all this bloat and it's all this stuff. He can kind of dial back his policy about ending the gun ban. He can kind of dial back his policies on the carbon tax because, you know, 95% of his policies are still intact. And it's like, well, there's certain issues in that platform that people were particularly passionate about, and the rest they could kind of take or leave. That's where polyv is making the right decision, that you just sort of stick to big ticket items. You just stick to long overarching narratives about what you want to do, and you don't just start machine gunning people ideas about how you're going to give them O'Toole bucks at the pump that they can spend on solar panels. Then nobody cares. It's uncompelling.

Russell: Well, and I guess in a way and again, I don't want to get too personal because actually I respect Aaron O'Toole for a couple of reasons. One, he served in the Canadian armed forces and that he went to RMC. He wasn't in the reg force. And we have to respect and I don't like this stuff on Twitter. He posted on Remembrance Day a couple of years ago, and he had his medals. I think it was his regimental jacket or something like that. And he was posting a Remembrance Day message. And people that claim that they're patriotic Canadians, Canadian Patriot 20 4116 said, you're an effing trader and we hate you, and Canada hates you. And I'm like, listen, you know what? You can hate the policies. You can dislike him and his way of doing things, but for a Canadian patriot and that you got to give the man his dues on remember and stay in that that he served his country. He was a lawyer. And they don't just hand out law degrees. You still have to go to school. You still have to pass the exam. So I don't want to become just a bash on Aaron O'Toole because it's kind of cool to do know he served in politics for a while. Where was the ex soldier Aaron O'Toole? Where was the bright lawyer Aaron O'Toole during his tenure as Conservative Party leader? I knew Aaron O'Toole was doomed when I saw him wearing the high heels for the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. As soon as I saw that, I said, he's doomed. This is not what conservatives are looking for. This is not what Conservatives want.

Wyatt Claypool: Well, because you brought up the walking a mile in her shoes thing, I've always just found that really disrespectful for women. It's like if you actually want to deal with an issue that has to do with women. How about you not put on shoes like you're wearing the female costume right now and making a whole sort of dumb event out of standing up? If there's a real issue that women have as a group, throw $300 to it. Stop putting on high heel shoes. Just help out in some way. But I also don't disrespect Aaron O'Toole. I don't like him. At the same time, I'm never going to be one of those people who just hates the essence of him. I think that you kind of have to respect anyone who can become a party leader. At the very least. It takes a lot of hustle and a lot of effort to even get close to doing that. At the same time, with Aaron O'Toole, I actually thought he was going to be a failure. And this is kind of the National Telegraph's claim to fame a little bit these days because we were the first independent media organization who was basically like, as soon as he announced, we were like, nope, this guy cannot be the conservative leader. He's going to fail. He's going to tell you everything you want to hear, and then he's going to immediately take it back. Because we remember that when the NDP proposed something that was basically their own more radical version of Bill C 16 that the Liberals passed, that the bill that Jordan Peterson had stood up against, aaron O'Toole was one of, like, five Conservative MPs who voted for it. Even Michelle Remplel didn't vote for it. She abstained, I believe. So that was one of the big red flags on the field, is that Aaron O'Toole had this very kind of strident need to oppose the conservative establishment. Not oppose the conservative establishment because he's more principled. He needs to oppose them to show that he is bipartisan. And he stands up like, I don't know, LGBT rights or whatever, as if being able to compel people to say certain words is a right. It's ridiculous. But again, we just sought from the beginning that Aaron O'Toole is very comfortable with being chameleon when he wants to be, which is why when he ran in 2016 against Sheer for the leadership, he ran as the quintessential red Tory. And when he ran in 2020, he was the true blue guy. It's like, soon as that happens, you know, the guy's just some office seeker who's willing to kind of pivot here and there because he just desperately wants to be the leader of the country. And that's not I hate overusing the word narrative, but it's not a compelling narrative that you just wanted to be prime minister. Whereas this is, again, where Shearer also failed, is that Shearer didn't kind of lost himself when he became the leader. He stopped being the social, conservative, traditional Catholic father. He became the guy who sells used cars. Like, he became the very generic conservative who's not going to rustle any feathers, and he's going to talk super quiet and he's going to make everyone feel comfortable. It's like, okay, the guy making everyone feel comfortable and shooting videos in parks where he says hi to a mother and daughter who walk by him. Yeah, people don't hate the guy. They're also not showing up to vote for him. That's kind of his problem. Aaron O'Toole became the guy who tried to pretend to be hardcore and then immediately cut ties with all those people. So he ended up pleasing zero.

Russell: Know, I'm going to go back to kind of the Stephen Harper kind of era here. How much of this can we levy onto Stephen Harper and the reason why I say that Stephen Harper was an excellent fiscal manager at the cost of all social policy. Basically, Stephen Harper, in my opinion, took very little stances in anything social. Now, this is kind of before the social justice movement really took off and when it took off and Harper's government didn't meet that, in my opinion, that's what cost them the election because everyone else was moving towards this whole idea where you need to performative politics in a way and the whole world was moving towards it. We can thank the United States for that with the election of Obama and we can know some other countries and kind of the standoff nature of the UK parliament and stuff like that. When the liberals started to get up there and they were taking these very populist style stances, I guess we can say performative politics. And Stephen Harper said, you know, from what I saw, he basically said, no, we're just going to stay the know, liberals want to say that we're going to bring up abortion and whatever. We're not going to say much on it. We're just going to keep up with the fiscal stuff. Well, the world's moved past the fiscal and they want social policies. I mean, it's culture war stuff. The culture wars had really heated up and Stephen Harper's caucus and his government didn't really rise to that occasion. The most disastrous thing I ever remember was when they did that attack ad, justin Trudeau, he's just not ready. Like, what the hell is that? You're telling people he will be ready one day.

Wyatt Claypool: Yeah. Do you know why you're basically there that ad is so bad? Because it's an ad designed around imagining Justin Trudeau as prime minister and then he's just not mean. And the whole ad is about thinking that he could be prime minister, but is he ready? But the thing is, most voters will when you propose that question to them, regardless of what the commercial's conclusion is, you've put them down the path of thinking, well, could trust and Trudeau be prime minister? The conservatives don't think he's ready, which isn't a flat. No, but they don't think he's ready. But I think he is. And it's such a stupid ad. Here's a good way of putting it. What was the thesis or the story of the 2015 election as told by the Conservatives, why should you vote Conservative in 2015?

Russell: What I saw was it's just you need to vote Conservative because the Liberals are incompetent, they're juvenile, they're running a Jester kind of they had that boy.

Wyatt Claypool: Band kind of attack ad on Justin Trudeau that he's kind of this Ken doll kind of a guy running for prime minister. But the thing is, even then, they weren't even that focused on the Liberals. They were kind of focused on both the Liberals and the NDP because I don't think they really could figure out who was going to be their main opponent. But think back to the 2011 election for the Conservatives. That one was textbook brilliant. That their entire narrative was the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals are trying to hold up our legislation because they're upset they don't get to be prime Minister or they don't get to be the leader of the government, even though all of them have basically no seats. And Mike Lugnadiev is just here visiting.

Russell: Yeah, he's just visiting.

Wyatt Claypool: Just visiting is probably one of the best ads that's ever been run in North America. It is an amazing ad because that ad at no point makes you think that Michaeladiev could even be the prime minister. It is basically saying he is here for a tour and he's about to go back to the United States after this election. It basically is bringing you on side and saying, hey, let's go vote to get Michael Ignatia back down to Washington as fast as possible. It's a fantastic ad. The Conservatives had a fantastic narrative to run on, and I think they could have had a good narrative to run on in 2015, but they kind of settled on this idea that we've been pretty competent. You should vote for us instead of the guy selling you sunny ways. And as much as people make fun of Sunny Ways, sunny Ways is a brilliant slogan because at the end of the day, harper's entire feel, at least the media's portrayal of him, is very dark. It's very, very it's very much everything's inside the PMO. Even cabinet ministers don't exactly know what's going on. That's not because Harper was a bad prime minister. It was more so he's just the type of guy who likes to kind of keep everything as close to himself as possible because he doesn't like kind of information going too far and it biting him. So the thing is that he had a reputation of almost being a bit of a dark, insular, awkward figure, and Justin Trudeau was the guy bringing the sunshine into the room. So as silly as Sunny Ways sounds to an average voter, they hear Sunny Ways after they see the stupid video of Harper putting money down on a table and talking about how much the Liberals are going to cost them. And it's this very cheesy kind of a campaign stunt. And then they see the waist thing, they're like, Ah, doesn't sound too bad.

Russell: But I mean, I remember even, you know, Rick Mercer when Stephen Harper wearing the noise canceling ear muffs while his cabinet was talking to him. They did like a skid on it. I remember I even laughed at that because by then it was kind of this established fact or narrative at least, that Stephen Harper had an inner caucus. And when other people tried to tell him things, he kind of ignored it and wasn't really, know, open with his entire cabinet about things. He kind of had like an inner circle and those were the people that got most of the information and he got most of his advice, you know, to segue that back into this. How much do you think that that Harper esque behavior negatively affected Andrew Shearer and Aaron O'Toole and their inability to approach the culture war and these social issues? That's the biggest problem. The Conservative Party. Like Pierce finally seems to be broaching it. When he did that recent thing for YouTube, the video was saying no more woke. When he says that, I was like, that's brilliant. That's it right there.

Wyatt Claypool: And the thing is, you should be always able to sum up a campaign narrative in just a few more words. In just like three words. No more woke. Perfect. Actually, in Alberta, the UCP ended up stealing my and when I say stealing, I mean like, I came up with it a month and a half before they did and they basically use the same thing with minus one word, is that you guys should be stopped. Stop saying they had some boring slogan before and then I started sending around to every single MLA's campaign just say keeping Alberta moving forward. And then I think they settled on moving Alberta forward or whatever. But it's like you guys need to actually come up with a slogan that implies momentum, not just keep the NDP away because that's a losing issue. But to go back to your thing about Harper, I don't think that Sheer and O'Toole's failure is really born in Harper. As much as the strategy firms that tend to surround the Conservative Party, every single candidate, literally any politician could be the leader of any party and they have some chance of winning an election. It's being able to work with that candidate and find out their strengths and play to their strengths. Harper had certain strengths that he had, and in 2011, they were played up to the nth degree that this is the competent guy, and he doesn't have any time for Michael Ignatiyev, who doesn't even show up to Parliament. And whatnot that? Steven harper is the guy who's there an hour before parliament starts, and he leaves 2 hours after it ends in case anyone needs any more information. They played up his competence and then they played up how whiny the opposition parties were and whatnot. But when it went to Shearer, who in a certain sense is a more jovial, almost cheesy kind of a guy, like, he's the type of guy who makes dad jokes. If you were to kind of like yeah, if you were to kind of define Andrew Shearer down, he's a really nice dad. Like, he's a great guy. And the thing is that they kind of play them up as the I'm the analytical accountant who really knows everything about the government the way Stephen Harper did. And it's like, that's not how you should be running an Andrew Shearer campaign. He should be running one on the fact that I'm a moral, ethical man and Justin Trudeau is not that I am the type of guy who goes to church every Sunday. I am the type of guy who teaches my kids good values and whatnot. I am bringing those good values to government that would have been far better. Aaron O'Toole, even though I think he was a little bit dead on arrival because he kept flip flopping on his positions even before 2020, is that he should have been that I'm the veteran. I understand duty. I understand the idea that we actually should be bringing a certain loyalty to government, that Justin Trudeau has been disloyal to Canadians and I'm going to be loyal to Canadians, something like that. Again, it's maybe not as inspiring as O'Toole because he doesn't have that kind of hard edge, stop the woke kind of stuff, but that's where Pierre should be, is that he's the type of guy who gets up in Parliament, asks the same questions ten times in a row because Canadians deserve answers now. Kind of like the sort of a thing that that should be his narrative, that we should stop the woke and because Canadians actually deserve real government kind of a thing. That's where I always tend to sort of think in slogans and whenever I write articles, I'm very much thinking headlines. And it's like, this is where I feel like and I'm not criticizing Conservative Party because I haven't really, to a certain extent looked at a lot of their recent sort of media stuff. But there's a reason why Polyev absolutely swept the leadership races. He kept everything very boiled down and he kept everything quintessentially. Polyev, I've even been told that most he's probably the first guy to ever be elected in Canada purely based off social media. And it's because him and his own team controlled the social media. He didn't hire people from the Central Party whose main jobs are usually vetoing ideas because vetoing an idea that could pose some risk always gets you promoted rather than approving an idea that has some risk attached to it. But the thing is Polyevan, I think I was told by someone who's close to him polyevan two other guys basically came up with and shot every single one of his videos and they're what easily won him the race was all of his videos, his walk and talk videos where for just 45 seconds he articulates very clear conservative principles to you.

Russell: Well, I think Ben did a great job on his videos. I was very nervous, though, and I run a substac page as well, and I trashed Pierre in an article and I don't regret it. I compared him to Matt Walsh because around the same time that Pierre was being attacked for the MGTOW tags in the videos was the same time that the Serfs went after, you know, for his previous support for that one big family that turned out they weren't very good or whatever. I don't know all the details. And Matt Walsh came out and said, I'm not apologizing. I'll never apologize to you freaks. I'm going to come at you even harder. I'm not going anywhere. You're not going to cancel me. I'm going to be here every single day. I reject your cancellation. And I was like, There we go, there's someone that gets it right. And then that same week here was in Parliament, and he's stumbling over his words because they're like, oh, you're courting incels, and what are you doing about your and he stumbled over his words when he was like, oh, we're taking care of that. He stumbled. And of course, the Liberals are all banging on the tables like a struggle session. And I thought, that isn't good. You just need to say, you know what?

Wyatt Claypool: You have to be stridently. You don't have to say, I'm not apologizing, or something like that. You can even just say, well, I guess we're not going to include the tag. We told our guy not to include it, okay? And you just walk away and it's like just keeping it short. If you're ever going to even admit to a slight mistake, keep it short and don't grovel.

Russell: Didn't make a mistake, though.

Wyatt Claypool: That's the problem.

Russell: He didn't make a mistake. He should have gone out there and said, yeah, you know what?

Wyatt Claypool: I think you and I would both agree, though, maybe don't include the MGTOW tag because it's a little weird. Just like MGTOW stuff is very weird. I know what that know, I'm even friends with a creator who used to make MGTOW videos. Her name's Diana Davison. At the same time, probably not the best thing to be tagging. At the same time, it's not worth apologizing for because it's not a controversy. So if someone confronts you with it and they're like, oh, hey, you had MGTOW in your thing, are you going to use that tag? I don't think we're going to use those tags in the future. Thanks for pointing out to us. Bye.

Russell: And then I would have gone in a different direction. I would have know, oh, are you going to use MGTOW in the future? I would have simply said, yeah, you know what? The Conservative Party is very concerned that there's a lot of disenfranchised young men in society, and I think that we need to find ways to reengage them in society appropriately. And we're going to do that, I.

Wyatt Claypool: Think you could almost say, in a certain sense, like, well, we threw in the MGTOW tags because even though we don't agree with MGTOW ideology, I think that it's healthier for them to find a better outlet for their kind of sort of waywardness. And I think that the conservative values are better for them than sort of the MGTOW values. But both of us can come up with far better ideas than basically trying to say, oh, I don't know what happened, I'm sorry. Well, we can maybe not that he specifically groveled in a way, but it was like, indecisive, and it's just like having decisive answers will always be better. My theory is that right now, justin Trudeau's biggest negatives in terms of his electoral potential is all of his policies and all of his scandals. What keeps him actually getting elected, I guarantee, is his controversies, because controversy keeps him relevant, which means he very much sticks in the minds of liberal voters who make sure to go out and vote for him. There's been controversial conservatives in the past, some of which I'm actually fairly friendly with, but it's like Rob Anders. They had to take like four or five runs at him to beat him in a nomination race inside the Conservative Party. And he's the type of guy who's not usually diplomatic, the way he says things, but because he's controversial, he actually tends to keep a fairly large fan base. So to a certain extent, not that you should exactly act like that, but the thing is that there is an idea that if you say something, especially when you know you're in the right, being a bit controversial helps. This is why I think Donald Trump was able to beat Hillary Clinton. I actually don't think that if he was a little bit more reserved, I don't think he would have won. Because the thing is that in a low turnout election, you need to get your fired up base out there. So whenever people show that the conservatives are at 35%, but the liberals are at 30, and the liberals would still win based on the regionals, and they still have the seat count no, if the conservative base is more fired up, those liberal voters are not going to come and save them in these small pocket ridings. The liberals desperately need the liberals in 2025, I guarantee, have zero narrative to run on. And as long as the conservatives don't betray their base, and they actually play to their base a bit, they're going to beat the liberals purely on turnout alone. They don't even need to almost convert anyone else.

Russell: Well, it is worrisome, because the conservatives have a really bad habit these days of shooting themselves in the foot. Without getting too much into Maxime Bernier versus Pierre Poliev and know Maxine Bernier has a base for a reason and Pierre would be very well suited to look at why he has that base. I really think that that would be something he should be looking at and saying, why does Maxine continue to have that base? Where are we missing now? I don't think we need to do a Reform Party where we bring the two parties back in. I actually think the PPC is great for the Conservative Party. And the reason is, and I've been at very big ODS with people on this, I have friends that are Conservatives that have gotten very mad at me about this the Liberals have the NDP to keep their sword sharp. The NDP keeps the Liberals sword sharp. The Conservative Party, their sword's been dulled over the years. Now they have the PPC, and the PPC is going to force them to actually sharpen their sword. When I say that they're going to have to take more hardcore stances on things, I actually think that Pierre Poliev's stance on Woke and all that is actually born from the PPC.

Wyatt Claypool: I think he does a much better job of maintaining a base than Maxime does. But at least Maxime, to give him a rare compliment these days, does know that you actually do need to be sometimes talking about the hot button issues of the day in order to maintain your base. Maxime's problem is that they have a purity testing problem in the PPC, where unless you agree with every single thing that Maxime Bernier thinks, then you're going to get thrown out. Whereas Pierre, I think he's doing a much better job than most Conservative Party leaders would do, in the sense that he's not let around by the nodes by his base, where if his base wants him to talk about something, he's going to get out there and just parrot whatever they think. He does have his own personality and he does have this ability to sort of say, I'm not going to get into that. At the same time, he actually does take hard stances when need be. So going back to Blaine Higgs, when Blaine Higgs started standing up for parental rights and got a majority of Canadians on his side previously, before the polling came out, pierre is like, Well, I believe in provincial rights, so New Brunswick is allowed to do what it wants. Maybe I would have wanted him to stand up for parental rights then and there because I feel like in my own mind, it should be fairly obvious that I think a lot of people are going to sign on the side of parental rights. But when it came out that 57% of Canadians agree with Blaine Higgs is doing and only 18% disagree, and then Pierre Polyv came out and said, I think the provinces should be in charge of teaching kids, academics and parents should be involved in raising. Their kids. Is it good? Okay, good. You've actually understood where the majority of the people are on this issue. And I hope that as we go forward, you're going to realize that when 80% of people agree with us on this, regardless of how controversial the media pretends that the issue is, if you just stick to it, you're eventually going to have all those 80% of people show up. And think about it this way, to win a majority in Canada, you need like 37% of the vote. 38% of the vote. Why are we scared of taking on issues where we have 60% of of people agreeing with us? It's like late term abortion. 9th month abortion is opposed by 95% of people. And yet we're always kind of scared that we could have the tide turn on us if we embrace that issue. Even though you're easily going to probably pick up a lot of people who don't vote because most people don't stand against those issues. But we're thinking that, well, we're going to lose our left flank and all the PCRs are going to vote liberal if we decide that maybe it's wrong to put a pair of scissors in a baby's face, but whatever. Maybe I'm just dumb and I don't understand politics, but I think that if the vast majority of people are on your side, it's not a bad stance to take.

Russell: No, definitely. Now, Erna Toole, when he did his concession speech, when he stepped down from politics altogether, he warned about subscumbing to Populism, he warned about divisive politics, and then he also warned about following the social media algorithms, that the algorithms are creating radicals. He didn't say it directly, but the insinuation is that the algorithms drive people to certain content. I don't necessarily think that he's wrong overall, but I feel like he missed the point completely. That is what the conservatives need to capitalize on is the algorithm. You can't ignore the algorithm. The algorithm is there to stay, whether you like it or not. It's time to make the algorithm work for you.

Wyatt Claypool: Yeah, well, also to a certain extent, there's certain things that get promoted in the algorithm, not just because the algorithm favors them, but because people actually care about them. But I think what Aaron O'Toole was doing there is he was trying to protect his own legacy. He was trying to secure his legacy by pretending that I was the moderate bulwark against the radicals. It's like, no, you are just empty. You are just a liar. You lied to your base and they threw you out and now you're trying to shame Pollyv because he actually understands what the average Canadian wants and might actually give it to again, I guess we could add that to sort of the definition of red, Toryism, is that there's somehow a virtue in holding back from your base. Regardless of what your base wants, holding back from them is somehow a good thing. Because the thing is that it's not just that red Tories don't really like social conservatives. They don't like fiscal conservatives either. Red Tories hate the idea of mass tax cuts. They don't like the idea of just heavily deregulating and making Canada more open economy. They're the type of people who get really excited by the idea that we're going to give you a $200 tax credit because your kid got enrolled in some sort of sporting event or whatever. It's who gives a crap? At the end of the day, people care about things that they're passionate about. They don't care about things they're not passionate about. And when you run on tax credits and you just run on good government, no one's going to vote for you because anyone can say that it's the most generic middle of the road position possible.

Russell: Well, he made plenty of those type of stances saying we need to get people back to work jobs. He talked about manufacturing vaccine plants and stuff like that. But even in his exit interview with CBC, he noted that one of his pitfalls was that he doesn't think that his party necessarily took on the issues that the conservative voting base was most concerned about. And he brought up the term freedom. He put a very politically correct, he said lockdowns, but people staying home. It was a very politically correct way of saying people weren't allowed to run their businesses. And I was disappointed even with his exit talk that he did with Canada land where he basically yeah, you know, people's businesses suffered and some people lost their like it was very plain, but it's like no, that's people's livelihoods even.

Wyatt Claypool: More than people's livelihoods. That's someone's identity that that person made to get on the micro. That person made their Greek restaurant. They were operating it. People knew them for 15 years and then you take that away from them and who are they now? Who are they in that community? They're just some guy who doesn't have a job. Not only are they bankrupt, but they've just lost what their whole position in that community? It wasn't just, we had a little bit of economic stress and it's like an aeronautula at any moment could have actually stood up for those people. And he chose not to. And again, it's not because, oh, well, we saw the polling and we focus group people. Focus groups are for when you want to design a question so that you get the answer you want. Focus groups are half the time just meant for people who are seeking an answer, not actually looking for a real answer.

Russell: Wyatt, it's been really great having you on the show today. We've talked about a lot of different things, red tourism, we talked about Aaron O'Toole. Pierre. We kind of dived a little bit into the National Telegraph, a little bit about yourself as well, kind of our personal stances on a few things where can people find you on social media on Twitter?

Wyatt Claypool: They can find me at people are allowed to add me on Facebook if they want. I don't mind people adding me on my personal page. People want to follow the national Telegraph. It's just at Telegraph on Twitter. Or if you just type in the national Telegraph, you'll obviously find it just as if you type in the national Telegraph on the search bar on Facebook, you're going to find that there too.