The campaign chair for Erin O'Toole's leadership bid is a man named Walied Soliman. A large segment of grassroots conservatives are likely to have a couple of issues with the things Mr. Soliman is involved with. For the most part, conservatives seem to have a deep-seated dislike for the amount of influence the United Nations has inside Canada, especially with the amount of influence the global organization has on our political parties and their leaders. One of the biggest—and most often ignored—questions asked by conservatives relates to what the next Conservative leader plans to do about the United Nations and its unfettered influence over Canadian politics. Unfortunately, having a guy like Walied Soliman run parts of a Conservative leadership campaign only helps to solidify the distrust many grassroots conservatives have for the big C party.

Erin O'Toole has long been viewed as a soft conservative. It was only recently that he began using appealing trigger language like “radical left” and “cancel culture”. If we go back to O'Toole's 2017 leadership campaign, it looks a lot like the exact kind of weak, milquetoast, middle-of-the-road conservatism that everyone has been complaining about for three years. Fast forward to 2020, suddenly O'Toole is a cool conservative who uses all the right words, stokes all the right emotions and attacks all the right people.

If anything, it raises red flags.

At first it might look like O'Toole has learned something over the past three years. It might be true that he learned how to be a “True Blue” conservative, or it might be true that he's putting on a clever magic show to win the leadership. With a progressive like Walied Soliman chairing his campaign, I'm leaning toward the latter.





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