Article content continued

Related

That’s what makes this strategy smart. It can’t be ignored. It can’t downplayed. It can’t help but gain currency and profile for Leitch. For those very same reasons, it’s also an enormous problem. And not just for those who dislike her ideas, but for Leitch herself.

She and Kouvalis have unleashed a debate that runs to the root of who we are as a country and how we see ourselves as a people. It is essential, uncompromising territory. Going to war over values is, by definition, a fight to the finish. Yes, it invites attention and admirers. But it also attracts opponents who feel compelled to commit themselves entirely. A fight like this ends only when one or the other is well and truly routed.

For Leitch this means that she risks far more than simply losing a leadership race. She could lose irreparably and irretrievably. When this race is done, don’t bet on its winner welcoming her to the team. More likely, she will be held up as an example of where the future Conservative Party will refuse to go. She could – and probably will – end up thoroughly radioactive, unwanted and untouchable in her own party and for damn sure in any other.

So for Leitch, it’s win or nothing.

Ironic then, that it’s not even obvious what we she truly believes. Her April apology for the “barbaric cultural practices” debacle is thoroughly incompatible with her sudden enthusiasm for an immigrant truth-test. Which is the real Kellie Leitch? The woman brought to tears with regret? Or the candidate doubling-down on Trump-talk with a visa application in one hand and a syringe of sodium pentathol in the other?

Nick Kouvalis is smart. But that’s precisely Kellie Leitch’s problem.

He’s given her a strategy that guarantees she won’t be an also-ran. But unless she wins outright, when this race is over her political career will be also.

—

Scott Reid is a principal at Feschuk.Reid and a CTV News political analyst. He was director of communications for former prime minister Paul Martin. Follow him on Twitter.com/_scottreid.