"This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no." The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it."
oh really! The linked-to G&M article is a mix of openly stated speculation peppered with supporting references to the Charest campaign's co-chairperson and former CPC leadership candidate Rick Peterson... founder of the group, also as referenced in the article, '
Centre Ice Conservatives'!
but hey now, another article (in The Hill Times) with some of the same players referenced... note the article headline doesn't end in a question mark! /snarc
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If Conservatives fail to win next federal election, party would split, say some ConservativesSelf-described “progressive liberal” and freelance columnist Andrew Perez: “Blue Tories are becoming an endangered species,” and that if something isn’t done to combat the party’s increased embrace of populism, 2022 will be the year they finally go extinct.
While Perez said in an interview with The Hill Times that he believes the Red Tories may have “died” in 2003 after the creation of the CPC, there still remained a strong contingent of Blues alongside other social conservatives and libertarians.
However, since the defeat of Harper in 2015, the party has been “submerged by a brigade of ‘freedom-loving,’ anti-science, anti-establishment ‘activists’ that are intent on installing Pierre Poilievre as leader–whatever the cost to their party and movement.”
Perez argued that Poilievre, in particular, has “glommed on to grievance-based populism,” possibly due to learning the wrong lessons from the defeat of the party’s last two leaders, Scheer and O’Toole.
“I think there’s a sense within the party that the last two leaders were not effective and that the party needs to tack to the far right,” Perez said. “To really champion an approach that is diametrically opposed to Trudeau.”