they might be able to get christine elliot to step down to make way for a coronation of caroline mulroney, but they are not likely to have such luck in persuading doug ford to leave the race.

she may be the better candidate to defeat wynne, but can caroline mulroney beat doug ford in a pc leadership race?

well, i might suggest that doug ford would dominate her purely in campaign infrastructure: across the board, he would have an advantage, in terms of boots on the ground and ability to get people out to actually vote, which we learned the importance of in the recent ndp race.

caroline mulroney has never run for office before, and, with no known platform, and no history of conservative advocacy, she doesn't have a lot of time to activate conservative base voters and convince them to vote for her. she's going to have a hard time connecting past the old money tory network.

in most places on this continent that wouldn't matter so much. it's usually not that hard to handhold a kennedy or a trudeau into some position of power. but, this party has a conservative base, and has this wild card of doug ford sitting right in the position where he could take control of it, and effectively push back against the palace coup. as this is a party vote, we will not see the rush of moderates swoop in to block the fords again, which is how they lose, when they lose - the party is at the whim of it's base, which is ford nation.

if i were to put down odds in a head-to-head match-up, i'd have to make mulroney the underdog, here.

so, might mulroney want christine elliot to stay in the race, then? well, to a card-carrying pc member, one would again think that elliot would dominate mulroney on personal characteristics; when you put them side-by-side, elliot would have more of the characteristics that pc voters would want, which would not be the same thing as the media want, or perhaps the same thing that the party insiders would want. elliot would no doubt pull from both ford and mulroney, but she would appeal more to moderates, and such a three-way race could land mulroney in third place.

mulroney could, in the end, be asked to step down so that she's not in the way of elliot defeating ford. and, this ought to be way that the pcs are thinking right now: this shouldn't be about how we get mulroney in, but about how we stop doug ford. because that will be the narrative in march.

i believe it was mulroney that called for the race. and, this may merely demonstrate the point about her inexperience in politics; if she had a better understanding of the conservative base, and what drives them to elect leaders, she would have realized that she's unlikely to do well in the best of circumstances (she would need to run unopposed) and would be better off angling to be appointed leader in caucus, and thus should have agitated for a permanent leadership process after the election, once she was a caucus member.

and, if she can't win her seat? well...she might wake up in april and realize she's too far behind to catch up.

i don't know anything about caroline mulroney's politics, so i don't know if i ought to oppose her entrance to electoral politics or not. but, the conservative party needs to cultivate the potential this time around.

if she jumps in head first before she's ready, doug ford is going to ruin her career before it starts.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.