There was a time when Conservative leadership hopeful Chris Alexander played a passable Robin to Stephen Harper’s Batman.

That was back when they still checked his ID at the LCBO and he was dining out on his time as our ambassador to Afghanistan.

Along the way, Chris has morphed into the Joker. Now it’s his credentials that are getting checked, not the baby face. That ought to be enough to get him stopped at any door in the country behind which serious things are going on — enough to disqualify him from running a political party, let alone a country.

In this week’s bilingual Conservative party leadership debate in Moncton, Alexander at least spoke good French — more than could be said for most of the people who shared the stage with him.

Kellie Leitch looked like someone was holding a can of mace inches from her eyes and whispering in her ear: “Speak French. Speak French now.”

Deepak Obhrai’s foray into the former language of diplomacy was enough to make the average Parisian jump in the Seine.

As for Brad Trost, his efforts in the language of Victor Hugo were nothing short of a recruitment tool for the separatists. One more word out of him and Premier Philippe Couillard would have been pulling on a Rene Levesque T-shirt and cussing Justin.

Since his drubbing in the last election, speaking decent French in the leadership debate has been Alexander’s sole accomplishment. So the Joker has a momentous question to answer:

Christ on a bicycle, Chris, how do rejection, humiliation and repeated political offences add up to your conclusion that you are fit to lead the Conservative Party of Canada?

Was it your sudden discovery of compassion for refugees during the last election that tipped the scales? If it was, had you forgotten that Tory policy up to that point was nothing less than pure, proto-Trumpian xenophobia?

Alexander and Leitch played rat-enablers to Stephen Harper’s policy phobias about anyone who didn’t come into the world singing O Canada and wearing a Leafs jersey. As abominable cultural practices go, how could they judge anybody? Alexander and Leitch played rat-enablers to Stephen Harper’s policy phobias about anyone who didn’t come into the world singing O Canada and wearing a Leafs jersey. As abominable cultural practices go, how could they judge anybody?

Until three-year old Alan Kurdi washed up on the beach and the photo of his body went around the world, you did squat while real people were dying in and around Syria. I think you might agree that there is a limit to being careful when people are dying in large numbers. Oh, I forgot — you were protecting us from all those terrorist refugees, as The Donald now promises to do.

What sort of leadership instincts did it take to allow yourself to be frontman for actions quite a distance from the ones that put Viola Desmond on the ten dollar bill? You and Leitch played rat-enablers to Stephen Harper’s policy phobias about anyone who didn’t come into the world singing O Canada and wearing a Leafs jersey. As abominable cultural practices go, how could a pair like you judge anybody?

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe it was getting the stuffing kicked out of you in Ajax in the 2015 federal election, despite all the political advantages of being an incumbent and a cabinet minister, that finally convinced you that you could be the next John A. MacDonald.

But I have to say, Chris, when your support drops by 11 points in an election, and you are fired by the people, it usually means they want less of you, not more. They don’t want you as leader, they want you to hit the road. And not the one that leads back to Parliament.

But I will give you this much, Chris: You’re not the only member of the CPC who believes that getting their butt kicked in an election is a call to further “public service.” There are a lot of belly-up Harperites just like you trying to get back on the public payroll in the upcoming Ontario election, including Joe Oliver, Bob Dechert, Daryl Kramp and the feckless Paul Calandra. Rick Dykstra tried but was defeated for the nomination in Niagara West-Glanbrook by Sam Osterhoff, a 19 year-old Brock University student.

But I would still like to know why you, a supposedly smart guy, are doing this. Maybe it was what you had on offer in Edmonton that made you think you still might have the old magic touch with voters. You know, that rally against a carbon tax that turned into choir practice for Trump’s Northern Apprentices.

Did you imagine for a moment — as the crowd chanted, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” — that you really were Trump? I’ve heard all your retroactive explanations of what you did. How you were mortified by what they were saying about Premier Rachel Notley. How you tried to change the subject. How you really, really disapproved of what was going on.

Tell you the truth Chris, you didn’t look mortified in the video. To me, you looked sort of excited, wearing a big smile, hand in the air. It was like the old days. You were knocking them dead again, they were cheering again, even if the cheer was a little dodgy.

So, another question for you. If you really were appalled at what your own party’s interim leader has called a bunch of chanting “idiots”, why didn’t you just pick up the megaphone you were holding and tell them to frack off with the hate stuff — the way you would with any mob that using your presence as an excuse for doing the two-step with bigotry?

Even Donald Trump eventually renounced the KKK.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.