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Having analyzed their last four electoral defeats, PC members must have concluded that the problem was that they didn’t have a leader who was stupid enough.

Enter Doug Ford, the perfect solution. Sure, the party could have picked the competent and experienced Christine Elliott but that’s not how the PCs roll. Why choose a rational person with real qualifications when a world-class nitwit like Ford was available?

The simplistic angry man act worked for Trump. It’s a tougher sell in Ontario.

Ford takes the party away from the centre, where most voters are, and back to the right, where the PCs lost the last election. Just to make the Liberals’ job a little easier, Ford has started talking about abortion and the sex-ed curriculum. Ford’s a dream candidate, for the Liberals.

And then there was Saturday’s convention. What a fiasco. Instead of sending members home fired up to support a new leader, the PCs just sent their members home, without even knowing who the leader would be. Couldn’t they at least have found a hall that was available for the whole evening?

To be fair, if ever so briefly, a lot of good volunteers worked hard to try to pull off a leadership race that was the political equivalent of speed dating. They didn’t quite manage it, unfortunately.

The PCs’ complex way of choosing a leader didn’t stand up to the test of a close contest. It appears that Elliott had the most votes but lost the race. That never seems right.

The Kathleen Wynne Liberal government is so bad that the PCs might still win the June election, but they have done every conceivable thing to make it difficult. Does this party have a death wish?