In this episode, I talk about why the BC United Conservative Party merger talk is a media hit job, and why John Rustad should have been able to maneuver his party into a coalition with the BC Conservative Party. I also talk about the reasons why a coalition between the United Party and the Conservative Party is a bad idea.
00:00:00.000British Columbia Conservative Party leader John Rustad deserves a lot of credit for having successfully maneuvered himself and his party through an NDP media hit job this last week.
00:00:10.820If you live in BC, you're probably very well aware of the supposed merger talks that were happening last week between the BC Conservatives and Kevin Falcon's useless BC United Party.
00:00:21.140The media was really pushing the narrative that the BC Conservatives and the United are in talks and they definitely need to talk and get together or they're not going to be able to beat David Eby and his BC NDP.
00:00:32.880It's utterly false. The BC Conservatives have all the momentum right now.
00:00:37.140The only way that the BC Conservatives could lose their momentum and not win the election in the fall is if they were stupid enough to engage in merger talks with the United and even fully merged.
00:00:47.300The United is a boat anchor on the BC Conservatives' popularity if they merged into the Conservatives or if they started a new party together, which would be the worst of all options.
00:00:57.960Kevin Falcon is not charismatic at all. People don't trust him. People don't trust his party.
00:01:03.120So if John Rustad had allowed them into the BC Conservative Party or started a new entity with Kevin Falcon, all it would have done is take all the great work that the BC Conservatives did and then water it down with the crap sandwich that is the BC United.
00:01:16.860It's really hard for John Rustad to get on a debate stage potentially with David Eby and say that I represent a 180 degree change from the BC NDP when you have Kevin Falcon in your party and the BC Liberals, which are now the BC United, were the ones who started a lot of the problems that David Eby is now making worse.
00:01:37.880So it would have looked very hypocritical. So this is why it was good that David Eby last week said that I'm not merging, we're not having serious talks, and Brad West can join our party if he wants.
00:01:49.340But if he doesn't want to actually just become an MLA and run like everyone else is, he can pack sand. It's not the job of the party to bend over backwards for the mayor of Port Coquitlam because he's supposedly kind of popular and that they should basically make their entire party around Brad West's personality.
00:02:07.880Brad West didn't put in the work, and it was never going to happen that the party was just going to give themselves over to him as well as Kevin Falcon.
00:02:15.560Now, why I'm saying that this was an NDP media hit job was because when you look at the media coverage of this, it was so artificial.
00:02:25.300No merger talks were seriously happening, but all of these legacy media journalists were out there talking about how there's a potential that these two parties could get together, and they definitely do need to get together or the BC NDP are going to win.
00:02:37.840Now, I want to pull up this clip right here and just play a little bit from it, because they were even bringing in hacky politicians like Christy Clark to imply that, well, John Rustad just can't win unless he brings Kevin Falcon into the fold.
00:02:51.660So the party was the Social Credit Party, then it was the BC Liberal Party, and now it's the BC United Party, the Conservative leader, and the...
00:03:00.800You can even see right there the contempt that Christy Clark has in her voice for John Rustad.
00:03:05.200Make no mistake, all of these people are united in trying to hurt John Rustad.
00:03:08.800This United leader were both in my cabinet at the same time, and, you know, what they need to remember is that we lost...
00:03:16.680Gordon Campbell didn't become Premier in 1996 when everybody thought he would, and he had higher polling numbers than the Conservatives do now, because there was a split in the vote.
00:03:27.320It's also why, although we won the election in 2017, we didn't get to form government, because there was 200 votes lost to the Conservatives in one riding.
00:03:36.560So they absolutely have to come together.
00:03:39.100We have the slowest economy in the country.
00:03:41.000This is the rhetoric that you're hearing from every talking head talking about this, and even when John Rustad was on an interview on CTV News, they kept saying, well, why aren't you merging?
00:07:39.640We don't want their consultants in our party.
00:07:41.880And you could tell this was a coordinated hit, because I guarantee David Eby had supplied these quotes
00:07:46.740well before this talk or this merger was going to happen, or like this potential merger talks were going to come out.
00:07:52.800And so a day after, 24 hours after John Rustad already said, this isn't happening, David Eby is quoted in an article saying, I can't believe they're trying to merge.
00:08:02.860You were just trying to create a fake narrative in order to smear the conservatives with United's brand.
00:08:08.900That's how you know all these people in the media are being utterly dishonest about the fact that the conservatives in the United need to combine if they want to beat the NDP, because the NDP is saying that they're basically indicating they hope they merge so that they can attack the conservatives as being full of all the old B.C. liberal consultants.
00:08:27.540It didn't happen, and now David Eby looks like a complete putz, because his party is actually effectively endorsing the idea that the conservatives are actually a pure party, full of actual good ideas and people who want to push for reforms, because they denied the consultants.
00:08:44.060The media is trying to bait, and they do this on the federal level and the provincial level all across the country.
00:08:49.960They bait you into watering yourself down, tick off your conservative base who are now not going to show up for you in as large of a number.
00:08:57.020And in the idea that because you've now taken the more moderate position or merged with the more moderate party, this is going to help you, when really all it does is makes all of the people in that party who don't like the conservatives just go over and vote for the left.
00:09:10.420This is what happened with Aaron O'Toole on the federal level.
00:09:13.440The media, and to a certain extent, they didn't have to really bait him, but they kind of baited Aaron O'Toole into adopting his own carbon tax, into saying he's not going to get rid of the gun bans, into saying he wasn't going to cut any government spending.
00:09:24.740And they got him to turn himself into a complete non-entity that election.
00:09:28.920He still won the popular vote, but that's just on the back of the fact that nobody likes Justin Trudeau.
00:09:33.660But Aaron O'Toole crashed and burned with his own base who decided that in the eastern Canadian provinces where most people don't really ever show up to vote conservative because they don't have a chance, they definitely stayed home.
00:09:45.860Because Aaron O'Toole made it so that even if you get out and vote and you put a conservative government in, we're not going to do anything for you.
00:09:52.260So what's the point if I know that my riding doesn't even have that great of a chance of going conservative?
00:09:57.160It's always on these marginal ridings that watering your platform down is going to hurt you.
00:10:02.040Because in rural areas, people are already used to voting for the conservatives.
00:10:05.360They're going to show up and vote for you even if you water yourself down.
00:10:08.540It's actually watering yourself down hurts you in the more moderate ridings because your hardcore supporters out there get ticked off that all of their work, all their volunteering, all their donating and going out and voting might not really make that much of a difference.
00:10:20.800Because we might not even elect the conservatives.
00:10:23.160And even if we do, he might not do anything.
00:10:25.280The BC conservatives are indicating that, no, we are actually going to pursue the heavy reforms that we need to make.
00:10:31.440And we're not going to suspend any of it just for the sake of Kevin Falcon needing to find himself a new job and trying to weasel his way into the conservative party now.
00:10:40.860Anyways, that should be it for me today, guys.
00:10:54.920I just want you to donate to these people because if you don't donate to your local conservative party, nobody else is.
00:11:02.340The mentality is always, well, a rich donor is going to come in and donate enough so that the BC conservatives can win.
00:11:07.860You can't actually donate that much in Canadian politics.
00:11:10.360So each person has to be giving 100 bucks or so if they actually want the conservatives to beat the NDP.
00:11:15.760It's a worth an investment to make sure that you're not going to pay more taxes in the long run to get rid of drugs from the streets, to get rid of crime, to get rid of SOGI.
00:11:23.320A hundred dollars to do that is a bargain.
00:11:26.080So consider doing that because you get 75% of it back in a tax credit anyways.
00:11:30.240And if you don't live in British Columbia, you can donate to my legal fund as I'm fighting a billionaire developer for defamation that he can't prove and hasn't given any evidence to prove in over two and a half years of this case being active.
00:11:42.840Give, send, go link in the description below.
00:11:44.680And if you want to join the TNT Telegram channel and get all of our videos in order as we post them, there's also a link to that in the description below.