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“Intellectually, this party, they just want to please everybody,” Bernier said. “…What is the goal of being in politics if you don’t believe in anything?”

That’s precisely what has seemed to me to be so off about the post-Stephen Harper Conservatives — a gnawing sense that there’s no there there any more, that regaining power and winning the next election isthe point, just as being the chief was good enough for the old chief.

With Harper, you knew what you got, pretty much: competence, self-confidence and gravitas.

To put it kindly, I don’t get that sense about Scheer.

I keep hearing/reading two things about him, the first that he is a wholly decent man, the second that he is making great inroads with his YouTube videos and social media. As for the former, that’s nice but I don’t really care; as for the latter, I don’t watch YouTube videos.

Certainly, in the 15 months since the Tories chose Scheer as leader, Bernier finishing just a hair behind on the 13th ballot despite having led on the first 12 (and who thinks having a dozen plus ballots is a good idea, or that the dopey points system the party uses is smart?), Scheer seems to me to have been largely absent from any public debate worth having.

And when he has been before the microphones, as he was Thursday from the Conservative convention in Halifax to respond to Bernier’s rather savage attack, he might just as well have been absent, so milquetoast was his response.

Now, the punditocracy has had time to pronounce upon Bernier’s performance, and has done so, with a few exceptions, with a single condemning voice: He’s just a sore loser; he’s a narcissist; he’s never going to be able to start a new party; why did he hang around the Conservative party so long if he didn’t like it?; and why is he putting himself first and thus “helping” the federal Liberals by dividing the party now, just when they might be vulnerable?