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It may have taken a while, but the message seems to be getting through: male politicians need to keep their pants zipped, their fantasies private and their hands to themselves, period. It’s not OK.

But there’s danger lurking in every step the PCs take over the next few weeks. A rapid cleansing and rebooting in advance of the June election is well and good; a civil war over the spoils of an unsettled organization is a sign the party hasn’t learned a thing from its four consecutive defeats.

Until the weekend, which spawned a raft of rumours, it was a bit of a surprise how few media voices were willing to pronounce the Tories dead in the water. You’d think that losing your leader in humiliating fashion barely four months before an election would represent an automatic death knell, yet a considerable body of opinion has suggested it could, just maybe, be an opportunity to correct the mistake made when Brown was chosen in the first place.

Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Even the loyally Liberal Toronto Star, which should have been giddy at the prospect of an easy victory for Premier Kathleen Wynne, saw the possibility. Editorial notes accidentally posted alongside a story on Brown’s demise suggested Brown’s fall could be “the Tories’ silver lining,” advising reporters that Brown “was sinking and now suddenly they have a chance to potentially find a white knight in shining armour to sweep in and win.”

The notes quickly disappeared, but the thought must have triggered alarm in the Star’s nether reaches, as a poll was quickly ordered up in which an astounding number of people were willing to claim they’d like to see Doug Ford run for the leadership — which he announced Monday he is doing. Other than maybe Mike Duffy, there’s no one the Star would more like to see re-emerge on a Tory stage than Doug Ford, solely for the fun of pummelling him with diseased tomatoes.