In the wake of Andrew Scheer’s surprise — yet, paradoxically, not really all that surprising – announcement that he would be stepping down as party leader, Rebel Media mission specialist David Menzies descended on the parliamentary precinct to find out just how the news was going down on the Conservative caucus circuit.

First at the Rebel mic: Alberta MPs Bob Benzen and Arnold Viersen, who obligingly submitted to a 10 minute back-and-forth with Menzies during which they offered markedly different takes on the latest developments.

Viersen, a self-proclaimed “big supporter of Andrew Scheer” who was “really looking forward to working with him in the future,” said he was “devastated” by the latest developments.

Not only could a leadership race lead to “divisive times” for the party, he warned that it might not be “good for the nation,” as he and his colleagues were hoping to be back on the election hustings “as soon as possible.”

His takeaway: “All of the actions that Andrew has taken have… spoken to his integrity.”

Benzen, however, was more circumspect, starting with his admission that he wasn’t actually surprised by the decision, as Scheer had “seemed deflated” since the campaign.

“Once you lose, it slowly starts to crumble,” he pointed out. He also seemed far more sanguine at the prospect of a leadership contest, given the need to “move in a new direction.”

Neither MP was willing to say much about the revelation that the party had been picking up part of the tab for Scheer’s children’s private school tuition, although Viersen stressed that, if it were simply paying the difference between sending his kids to a “Christian school” in Ottawa versus a “Christian school” in Saskatchewan, he wouldn’t have a problem with it.

Menzies also managed to buttonhole Conservative Senate Leader Don Plett, who lauded Scheer as a “great statesman who wants to do what is best for the country [and] the party,” and chose to step down over his concern that the continuing “distractions” — which he blamed on both “the media” and those “inside the party” would “hurt us in the next election.”

He also dismissed any suggestion that Scheer’s education-related expense claims were anything but above reproach, siding firmly with the party’s executive director, Dustin Van Vugt, who publicly confirmed that he had signed off on the funding arrangement, as is “not uncommon,” as per Plett.

“Andrew Scheer was not hiding anything,” but “firmly believed this was out there,” Plett contended.

A few days later, Rebel correspondent at large Keean Bexte dropped by Scheer’s alma mater in Regina to challenge passing students to identify Scheer from that now familiar file photo of him chugging a glass of Canada’s dairy farmers’ finest.

Among the random guesses: Stephen Harper and Boris Johnson, while another student wonders, “Why’s he drinking milk?”

The real reason for Bexte’s interest in Scheer’s profile, however, is revealed in his characteristically conspiratorial opening rant, in which he questions whether Scheer has any intention of actually vacating his current job.

“Andrew Scheer remains leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, despite saying in an email to members ‘I have resigned,’ past tense,’” only to “renege on that statement,” he notes.

“Since his supposed resignation, Scheer has been hiring and firing staff in the highest levels of the party. He is still disciplining caucus. He’s decided to stay on as leader, apparently, for an indefinite amount of time.”

Citing the 1979 precedent set by Pierre Trudeau, who “announced his resignation to take the public heat off of him, and then burned time until the government of the day collapsed,” Bexte asks: “Could this be Scheer’s last ditch attempt to move his family from Stornoway to 24 Sussex? I think it might.”

Meanwhile, who’s up for an all-new, totally-Team-Trudeau’s-fault continental trade war?

That, as per Rebel commander Ezra Levant, is what the federal Liberals’ plan to force online platforms to “remove illegal content, including hate speech, within 24 hours or face significant penalties,” as laid out in the mandate letter for newly installed Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, is “guaranteed to do.”

Why? Because, according to Levant’s read of the revised new North American trade agreement, Canada can’t treat social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube as content creators when they’re simply offering online space for content “posted and uploaded by their users.”

Finally, Alberta-based Rebel host Sheila Gunn Reid is in high dudgeon over Premier Jason Kenney’s decision to send a Kenney’s newly appointed deputy minister for policy coordination Mark Cameron, a “pro carbon tax sympathizer,” to the Energy Future Forum, which she describes as “a meeting of underminers, Stockholm syndrome sufferers, and saboteurs.”

As she sees it, Kenney could have sent a representative from the newly up-and-running pro-energy war room, which would have been “a totally different story,” but “Instead, they sent the sympathizer.”

(The Rebel has been pushing for Cameron to be fired since news of his appointment broke, and has even launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for a “magnificent” billboard last May, which, judging from the latest story, hasn’t yet had the desired effect on the premier.)

On the other side of the outside-the-mainstream media divide, Rabble’s Alberta blogger David Climenhaga has a very different perspective on Kenney’s ongoing anti-carbon tax crusade, which, he notes, may have taken a credibility hit over the weekend courtesy of CBC News, which crunched the numbers on the rebate system instituted by the previous New Democrat government and concluded that 40 percent of Albertans wound up ahead compared to what they paid out in increased tax.

In a nutshell, he notes, the CBC report sent the message that the now-defunct NDP carbon tax “did little harm and actually put more jingle in the jeans of those Albertans least able to pay.”

And that, he notes, isn’t the only “Alberta government talking point exposed as codswallop” in recent days.

“As in the case of the ginned-up brouhaha over the Notley government’s painless but poorly sold carbon levy, Kenney’s overheated rhetoric about the federal Liberals’ environmental assessment bill that was finally passed by the Senate last spring and thereafter was constantly assailed in the lead-up to the federal election in October turns out also to have been vastly exaggerated,” he notes.

According to a new paper out of the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, not only is the impact on the oil and gas sector limited, but the new assessment protocols “arguably more lenient … on oil and gas pipeline proponents” than the previous framework.

That’s all for this week, but fear not — The Rebel to Rabble Review will be back in January. See you then!