The Conservative strategy failed. There needs to be a reckoning.
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Summary
Candace Malan explains why the Tories are the big losers in the election, and why Justin Trudeau is to blame. She's joined by Andrew Scheer, Danielle Smith, and J.J. McCullough to discuss their reactions to the results of the election.
Transcript
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Everyone lost in last night's election, but the biggest losers of all were the conservatives.
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I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
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Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in today.
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I hope you enjoyed our coverage and our show that we did last night.
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We were live for about five hours up until around one o'clock in the morning,
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It was hosted by myself, True North senior correspondent Andrew Lawton,
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as well as True North in-house pollster Hamish Marshall.
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We had our sort of raw reaction to the news as it came in.
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We talked about every part of the country, every writing,
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really looked in depth at the Trudeau campaign, at the Erin O'Toole campaign,
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We had Sue Ann Levy in Oshawa and our own Harrison Faulkner out in Saskatoon.
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We also were joined by some wonderful, spectacular guests.
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So we had Andrew Scheer, former leader of the Conservative Party from the 2019 election.
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We're joined by Danielle Smith, former leader of the Wild Rose Party out in Alberta,
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and someone who's still very much involved in the political scene.
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Out there, we had J.J. McCullough, the popular YouTuber and columnist with the Washington Post,
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It was a great broadcast and just really enjoyed it.
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We had a new format that we're trying out using,
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so I could actually see all of the comments as we're coming in on social media,
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It was great to connect with our audience that way.
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And we really appreciate everyone who tuned in.
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If you want to go check that out, you can find it over on YouTube or on Facebook.
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I think that the obvious loser in last night's election was Justin Trudeau.
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Justin Trudeau made an absolute mockery and fool of himself.
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The entire purpose of this election was one reason and one reason alone,
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and that was so that Justin Trudeau could try to get a bigger share of the pie.
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He wanted unmitigated power to do exactly what he wants to do.
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He didn't want to have to bother with the hassle of working with the NDP and the Bloc,
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even though the NDP and the Bloc were incredibly supportive of his left-wing agenda.
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So Trudeau didn't have a very good reason to call the election in the first place,
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He didn't get the outcome that he wanted, which was the majority government.
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If he were an honorable person, if he had any decency, he would resign.
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I forced this unnecessary $600 million election.
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I bribed the media with more money, more taxpayer money.
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I demonized people who protest against lockdowns and vaccines.
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And again, if he had any sense of decency, he would resign and he would not be prime minister.
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Of course, Justin Trudeau doesn't have any decency.
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And therefore, he twisted it and spun it in his victory speech last night,
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saying that he was given a mandate, saying that it's clear, saying that he won,
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and basically acting as though he had just won a majority government, even though he hadn't.
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Justin Trudeau is a big, big loser of the night.
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And Canadians are worse off this morning because of it.
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But as I said in my intro, I think that the Conservatives are the big losers.
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Look, when it comes to Aaron O'Toole, I'll just be completely frank.
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He comes from the opposite side of the Conservative movement and party than me.
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I like to see a Conservative who is strong in their principles, strong on their values,
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unapologetic, willing to defend Conservatives and willing to live their values
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and have a distinct difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives.
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That's just the kind of Conservative that I am.
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I think that typically in the party, those people, people like me, are described as true blue,
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people who really believe in Conservatism, really believe in things like a smaller government,
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a traditional role for families, strong families, and a strong economy.
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And when it comes to the culture wars, yes, they're willing to defend, defend Canada,
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defend the West, defend our pipelines and our energy industry, and defend Canada.
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Not be apologetic, not pretend to be something that you're not, not buy into the sort of woke
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media landscape and the narrative that is pushed that you have to repeat these woke lines that
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are being shoved down our throat by a radical fringe left.
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I believe that a Conservative should stand up against those things, that they should be strong
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So look, Aaron O'Toole is not exactly my cup of tea, but here at True North, I try to give
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him the benefit of the doubt and to cover him with an open mind.
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So I wasn't overly critical of him during the campaign, even though there were a lot
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of things that he did that I severely disagreed with.
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And that's because, look, he has a different, he comes from a different side of the movement
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The whole idea was that he was going to run as a moderate, run as a centrist, sort of try
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So he basically ditched the entire social conservative wing of the party.
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He wasn't really willing to take on any of the cultural war, cultural battles that are
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At one point, he did say that he would raise the flag to full staff.
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That should be obvious that that's, yes, that's good.
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I would have liked to see a lot more of that from him.
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But regardless, he cut the social conservatives out of the party.
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He didn't let someone like Pierre Lemieux even run in the first place.
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When it came to the vaccine passports, the same kind of thing.
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A conservative should stand strongly against that kind of huge overreach and growth in
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The government should not be given that kind of responsibility over our lives.
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We shouldn't entrust the government to oversee something like that.
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A conservative needs to stand against that kind of thing.
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His strategy was that he was going to sort of mirror Trudeau on that wedge issue so he didn't
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When it came to the sort of, again, more libertarian issues, he didn't make any effort
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whatsoever to appeal to the anti-lockdown crowd.
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He sort of just let those people go to Maxime Bernier, let Maxime Bernier really own that
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And by the end of the campaign, we had sort of conservatives angrily saying a vote for
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Maxime Bernier is a vote for Justin Trudeau as if that was going to make the difference and
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as if they owned those votes, that it was mandatory that if you're a libertarian, you must vote for
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the conservative party, even though the conservatives weren't offering anything to try to appeal to
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libertarians, appeal to even conservative sensibilities on limited government and putting
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So, again, disappointing to see those two things happen.
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But the reason I was willing to entertain it is the idea that perhaps Aaron O'Toole had tapped
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into this strategy, that he was going to run as a red Tory, he was going to run as a centrist, he was going to
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appeal to all of these people in the middle who vote liberal, but maybe they were disaffected with
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Justin Trudeau and they had nowhere else to go because all of the other parties are fringe and
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So that was a strategy, kept an open mind, and I think that the results last night speak for
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In fact, he lost several seats in the 905 that the conservatives had won under Andrew Scheer.
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So Andrew Scheer, open, socially conservative, Catholic guy, family guy, didn't apologize for his
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Andrew Scheer stood strongly against UN overreach.
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He maintained his conservative principles, and yes, I wish there were some areas where he was even more
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strong and would push back even more, like the Paris Declaration.
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But regardless, in comparison, Andrew Scheer seems like a much, much more conservative
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So the idea that Aaron O'Toole didn't even gain seats in Toronto, he didn't even win the 905,
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the suburban belt around Toronto, that it seemed like his entire campaign was geared toward.
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But not just that, the conservatives got decimated in the lower mainland, in British Columbia.
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They basically, from our analysis and what Hamish Marshall was saying last night, they lost the
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The ethnic inroads that had been made under Harper are continuing to fade away.
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And so at this point, you have to stop and say, wait a minute, what was it all for?
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Aaron O'Toole ran a campaign where he basically threw the conservatives in his party under the
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And he didn't even make the inroads that he needed.
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It seemed like his entire campaign was geared towards appeasing the media and trying to appeal
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to people who, let me be frank, are never going to vote for conservatives.
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You're never going to win over these people, no matter how much you try to act like Justin
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And this is an incredible failure of judgment and failure of strategy.
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And I think there needs to be a reckoning with Aaron O'Toole as the leader of the Conservative
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Party within the Conservative movement, because his strategy didn't pan out.
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Instead, he alienated the entire Conservative base, including people who trusted him that he
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He said that throughout his leadership campaign, that the options for leadership of the party
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were Peter McKay, who was a known red Tory, and Aaron O'Toole.
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And the idea of why so many people threw their support behind Aaron O'Toole was because they
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believed that he was the more Conservative option.
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And this became evident throughout the campaign.
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I want to read a post that Aaron O'Toole put on his Facebook in the final days of the
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campaign, because I think it's just incredibly telling of the kind of strategy that
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he had, the kind of campaign he led, and the kind of man that he is.
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I want to talk to the many Canadians who are tuning into this election, and maybe, hopefully,
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looking at the Conservatives for the first time.
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I know some of you are hesitant because of things you may have heard or impressions that
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I know that you may not hear all that much from Conservative politicians.
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I understand that for years you've been let down by the Liberals.
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I guess he's trying to talk to people who don't typically vote for Conservatives.
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So basically what he's saying here is he's apologizing for the Conservatives in his party.
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He's apologizing for the Conservative positions his party has taken in the past, and he wants
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you to know that under his watch, the Conservatives are different.
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From the first day of my leadership, my priority has been to build a Conservative movement where
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every Canadian feels at home, inclusive, diverse, forward-looking, socially progressive, and
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As you look ahead to voting this election, I ask for your support.
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Okay, so we have all the left-wing buzzwords that he's included there.
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He wants you to know that the Conservative Party is now diverse and focused on diversity
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and inclusion, which we know is sort of left-wing academic buzzword.
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Look, the Conservative Party has always been diverse.
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Ever since I first went to a Conservative Party event, which was probably about 15 years ago
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in Vancouver, the first thing you notice about the room is that it's diverse.
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There's people of all backgrounds, all walks of life, all ethnicities.
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We were talking about this last night, that the whole idea that Conservatives are innately
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homophobic or anti-gay is just obviously untrue.
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If you work in Conservative politics or you're around Conservative politics, you recognize
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very quickly that there are a lot of people who are gay in the Conservative movement, a lot
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of people who identify as LGBTQ, a lot of people from different walks of life, again.
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So the idea that Conservatives oppose that has always been nonsense, always been a media lie.
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But again, here, Aaron O'Toole is repeating it and basically cementing those negative left-wing
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media stereotypes about Conservatives, admitting that they're true and promising and pledging
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So here he says he wants to be forward-looking, socially progressive and left-wing.
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So again, he's applying that he wants to be forward-looking, which implies that the
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former Conservative Party was, what, backwards-looking?
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He wants to be socially progressive, which means socially left-wing.
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So why is Aaron O'Toole pledging to be woke in the final week of the campaign?
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If you're a Conservative in this party who has long-voted Conservative, who has been loyal
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to the party, and you see something like that, you read something like that, that was the
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That was what he was talking about, apologizing for the Conservative Party, saying that the past,
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they were wrong, and he wants to move it in a more left-wing direction.
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When you talk like that, when you campaign like that, when you say those kind of things,
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when you run on a campaign trying to please the media, trying to please the left, and to
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get those people to win over, what you're really doing is you're throwing your own base under
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You're making Conservatives who have long supported and voted for your party feel like
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you don't want them, and that you're ashamed of them, and that you are basically apologizing
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So look, Aaron O'Toole didn't do what he said he was going to do.
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He didn't make the inroads that he was hoping to.
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He didn't pick up seats and make the ground by picking up those moderate or those liberal
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voters, and instead, he let the entire Conservative movement down.
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I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.