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The Alberta NDP are trying to do to Jason Kenney what the Ontario Liberals and their well-heeled chums in big labour have long done to Progressive Conservative leaders: portray them as bigoted, womb-bothering troglodytes who would close down hospitals and generally make us all thankful for legal euthanasia. They’re doing it now to Tory Leader Patrick Brown, who’s trying to live down a dreaded Green Light from the Campaign Life Coalition (long since turned red), a brief shambolic dalliance with the anti-sex-ed crowd and having been part of that awful Stephen Harper’s caucus.

Photo by Gavin Young/Postmedia; Craig Robertson/Postmedia

In the (big labour) Working Families Coalition “video room,” you can see a hilariously lazy ad comparing Brown to both Donald Trump and — no joke — Brexit. In another he’s accused of flip-flopping on everything from same-sex marriage to union rights — which is rather more on the mark, and highlights his basic current strategy: he’s going to try to out-progressive the Liberals at every turn, in hopes the attacks against him will ring false. He’ll hardly stop talking about how pro-choice he is. If there’s a pride parade he can march in somewhere, his office wants to know about it.

And that’s fine, of course — there’s nothing inherently un-conservative about either position, though he has certainly irked some of his base. There is something very un-conservative, however, about keeping mostly quiet while the Liberals extend rent control to every unit in the province and suddenly jack up the minimum wage to $15 (though they did say Tuesday they would delay implementation until 2022). In the absence of any significant policies of Brown’s own, one can understand why some Tory members wonder just what this thing they support really is.

If the Liberals introduced an Ontario version of Bill 24, the only thing I can imagine Brown doing is supporting it and begging his MPPs to keep shtum and do likewise. (Frankly I’d be shocked if the Liberals didn’t do just that.) That might be the right thing to do, and it might be smart — perhaps smarter than the UCP has been. But it would speak volumes about just how much some modern Canadian conservatives fear their own shadows.

• Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter: cselley