it's not believable, though.

harper was a kind of ruthless nerd, a policy wonk that may have often been wrong but would be wrong with charts and figures; scheer is more of a return to the airheaded fundamentalism of a stockwell day, kind of a reform party throwback, and if you're going to rerun an election, it makes sense for that to be the one you try to rerun.

the problem is that the more you point out that andrew scheer is kind of like stockwell day, the more you draw attention to the reality that trudeau also has surface similarities. trudeau is not the right guy to run a campaign centred around the premise that the opposition is too intellectually feeble to govern.

but, scheer does not project the competence that harper did, and is consequently not scary in the same way. people don't seem to fear incompetence, so much as they fear competence - they seem to want to ridicule incompetence.

the truth is that this is a field of intellectual lightweights. i would not expect the same kind of modular, issues-driven campaign that you got out of a mulcair v harper; this is going to be an election about feelings, perceptions and other trivialities that mostly come out in the wash - and the dour leftists are going to be standing on the side, pointing out that they're basically the same.

i would like to see the liberals knocked down to a minority, which is what i wanted in the first place. so, they should be careful about my advice, this cycle. but, i'm not sure how well the ghost of harper is going to stick to scheer.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-says-it-s-worth-pointing-out-similarities-between-scheer-and-harper-1.4233769