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At that point, Goldy takes over to explain that, “See, if you’re hot, smart, pretty and roll in the right crowds, I basically want to be your friend.” She’s not, she says, the jealous type, the clear inference that she herself is sufficiently hot that she’s not threatened by other hotties.

She and McCaffrey, Goldy says, are the closest thing to socialites in their town, though it’s vague about what town that is — McCaffrey’s Ottawa-area riding of Kanata-Carleton, or Ottawa itself. In any case, all any social event really needs, Goldy says, is the two of them.

Photo by Postmedia

Now McCaffrey didn’t help herself, or Scheer, by literally running away from reporters who wanted to ask about her friendship with Goldy, a speedy effort that was captured by a CBC camera.

Later that night, the Conservative war room issued a statement from McCaffrey in which she said, “This video is from 2013. I haven’t seen her in several years.”

It was not going to be enough; that was immediately clear.

Quickly, someone dug up a picture of the two women from 2017. Question: What is the definition of the word “several”? Answer: From Bill Clinton, what is the definition of the word “is”?

So on an overnight flight to British Columbia, Scheer held an unscheduled scrum on the plane, wherein he said that so long as a candidate “takes responsibility for what they said” and apologizes, he accepts “that people make mistakes in the past and can own up to that and accept that.” This won’t be a blanket policy, he said, in that past remarks will be judged on a case-by-case basis.