There isn’t a politico in Canada who didn’t see it coming: a concerted effort by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to steer the country’s gaze away from their own multiple shortcomings and instead fix upon Andrew Scheer’s personal views on abortion and same-sex marriage.

And when it came, oh boy, did the Liberal war room let fly. For eight concussive days, the Conservative leader remained inexplicably silent as the rival messaging hammered home, seeding the notion that Scheer represents a hidden agenda to turn back the clock to the middle of the 20th century.

Never mind that neither issue so much as nudges near the top 10 things voters are worried about in 2019. Never mind that Scheer’s long-standing policy varies not one iota from that of his predecessor, Stephen Harper. Never mind that Scheer had already offered multiple pledges not to tread anywhere near such socially divisive terrain.

And when Scheer finally fought back, eight days late, in a hastily arranged news conference at Pearson airport, it somehow came off as less than the sum of its parts. Yes, the Conservative leader pounded his talking points into the ground, over and over, promising anew that neither abortion nor same-sex marriage is anywhere on his legislative agenda.

Promises matter in politics. And as we all know, promises get broken. But what was so striking about these particular vows was their sheer impersonality. The Conservative candidate made it abundantly clear he would technically oppose any attempt by his social-conservative backbench to reopen the abortion file. But his own views on the subject were a no-go zone. Ask the personal, get a talking point.

So, of course, the questioned lingered: “Does he really mean it?” Perplexed that the Conservatives could so easily be taken off message for so long, speech writer and political commentator Scott Reid assessed the entire episode as “a pageantry of doubt.” It may have begun as little more than a Liberal tweet flung like spaghetti on a wall, said Reid — but eight days later, “I can’t think of a bigger war room win from the past 20 years.”

The irony — and it is acute — is that all evidence suggests Scheer actually does mean it. Scholars of abortion politics in Canada know it. The Liberals know it. Even the most optimistic and politically aggressive wings of the Canadian anti-abortion movement know it. Even if Scheer is elected, the electoral math simply doesn’t add up to any possible change in the status quo. It is not on the table.

If you doubt that is so, consider the crushing disappointment coursing through Canadian anti-abortion circles in the wake of Scheer’s promises on Thursday. It’s a community that saw the devoutly Catholic Scheer as one of their own. Their frustration and disappointment is palpable.

For Jeff Gunnarson, president of the Campaign Life Coalition, the operative word was “oppose” — Scheer’s vow to oppose any backbench effort to restrict access to abortions makes a mockery of the long-standing Conservative policy of allowing members of caucus to vote freely on matters of conscience.

Calling Scheer’s statement a “slap in the face” to anti-abortion Canadians, Gunnarson seethed with a sense of betrayal.

“What he’s saying is you can ‘express’ yourselves on matters of conscience, but if you do I’ll silence you, because we’re a team and the party is more important than your personal beliefs and the beliefs of the Canadians who elected you,” Gunnarson told the anti-abortion publication Lifesitenews.

“It brings scandal to the Catholic church, demoralizes Andrew Scheer’s base and jeopardizes his eternal soul,” said Gunnarson. “May God have mercy on him. We will continue to pray for him.”

Similar fury played out on the Facebook page of Right Now, arguably the most politically aggressive wing of social conservatism in Canada, where supporters vented fury and frustration at what they saw as Scheer’s betrayal, some threatening to abandon the Conservatives and park their vote in protest with Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party.

There is nothing the least bit hidden about Right Now’s agenda. It is led by co-founders Alissa Golob and Scott Hayward, who are very much the 21st-century face of anti-abortion Canada: young, diverse, energized and laser-focused on identifying, supporting and electing as many anti-abortion MPs as possible this fall — as many as 50 in a best-case scenario, which would still be far short of the majority needed to enable legislative change.

In an interview posted by Right Now earlier this month, Hayward detailed how that quest to win the electoral math, even in a best-case scenario, will take years — multiple election cycles, at least. He also explained how the hairline crack in the Conservative party policy — the promise to allow MPs to vote freely on matters of conscience — is their path to victory. Though Right Now doesn’t endorse any specific party, Hayward’s emphasis on “winnability” left little doubt it sees Scheer’s Conservatives as the primary delivery system.

Although it was always in public view, the Hayward interview was thrust into the national spotlight Thursday when Tourism Minister Mélanie Joly excerpted it on her Twitter feed as evidence of Scheer’s duplicity, saying it “leaves no doubt the Conservatives are misleading Canadians.”

Yet hours later — after Scheer’s news conference — the Right Now leaders struggled to hold the line, pleading patience as frustrated anti-abortion supporters vented fury in online comments. “Mad Max is the only option!” wrote one. “If he fails might as well give up and never vote again.” Another accused the Right Now leaders of being “so naive! Don’t you remember when Harper promised a free vote on same-sex marriage, then did everything he could to sabotage it?”

What does it all add up to, as Canada braces for the actual election writ, now only days away? Andrew Scheer finds himself, for the moment at least, splayed out between two mutually hostile camps, chasing elusive swing voters with promises that have inflamed an important part of his base.

Nothing game-changing, not yet at least, according the McGill University political scientist Kelly Gordon, who closely tracks the abortion issue in Canada.

Gordon, who co-authored the 2015 book The Changing Voice of the Anti-Abortion Movement, sees patterns in Scheer’s trajectory that match up closely with Harper’s: both courted social conservatives in their quest to win the party leadership, and both shifted, in the face of Liberal war-on-women-style rhetoric, back to the middle.

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“And it really wasn’t until Harper more stridently said he was not going to reopen the debates about abortion and same-sex marriage that Canadians felt more comfortable voting for him,” said Gordon.

She sees Scheer on a similar trajectory. “Do I think Andrew Scheer is personally anti-abortion? Absolutely. There’s really no doubt he’s a social conservative. He’s a religious man with five kids and a stay-at-home wife. But do I see him moving into power with a hidden agenda? No. I see him in the same place that we were at with Stephen Harper.”

One fact to consider, said Gordon, is that the abortion issue has never historically been a deciding issue in Canadian elections. “It never has been vote-deciding, even at the height of the abortion debate. Even in the early 1990s, Canadians didn’t rank abortion as a decisive question in the voting booth.”

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