Erin O’Toole’s big problem with right-wing media could hurt his election chances

Opinion

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This article was published 13/04/2021 (1354 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Let’s face it, federal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is a dud and a dud is never going to defeat Justin Trudeau.”

Ouch!

That stinging criticism of the beleaguered Tory leader came not from a progressive columnist at the Toronto Star or a left-leaning commentator on a CBC political panel.

Rather, it’s from Lorne Gunter, a senior political columnist at the conservative-leaning Edmonton Sun, whose opinion pieces also appear in right-wing papers such as the Toronto Sun.

In an April 3 column, Gunter wrote about how top-ranking Conservatives who once were high on O’Toole now “confess to being disappointed by O’Toole’s performance. One sighed this week that the Tory leader has the attention span of a housefly. He flits from issue to issue, never fully settling on one for more than a day or two.”

Gunter is just one of a growing number of columnists and editorial writers in right-wing media outlets who are increasingly critical of O’Toole for what they describe as his uninspiring leadership, lack of detailed policies, failure to quell dissent and frustrations within the party and more.

Many are voicing doubts about whether O’Toole has what it takes to lead the Conservatives to victory in the next election, against what they argue is a disastrous Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau.

Indeed, O’Toole’s trouble with the right-wing media is so serious that it could play a key role in undermining Conservatives’ hopes of winning the coming election.

For Conservatives, there’s a feeling of widespread liberal bias in much of the mainstream media. In their eyes the worst offenders are the Toronto Star and the CBC.

But they don’t expect to see the same — or even stronger — criticism of their party or their leader in right-wing media outlets. Instead, they expect their favourite news sources to go easy on O’Toole and to cut him a break whenever possible.

In truth, the vast majority of mainstream media leans to the right. That includes the Globe and Mail, National Post and other Postmedia newspapers, the Toronto Sun and other Sun papers across Canada, CTV, Global TV and a slew of radio talk shows.

Importantly, many Conservative voters, and others, now get their news — and opinions — almost exclusively on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. And what they choose to see often comes only from conservative-leaning sources, namely those very same newspapers and websites that are carrying more and more O’Toole-bashing articles and opinion pieces.

The cumulative impact is the sowing of doubt about O’Toole’s leadership skills, even among Conservative loyalists.

Here’s a sample of recent articles critical of O’Toole:

Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne: “For all Mr. O’Toole’s personal failings, the greatest part of the problem remains his persistent casting about on policy … the party has given people no positive reason to support it.”

National Post columnist John Robson: “It’s not that O’Toole doesn’t know man-made global warming is a crisis, or what to if so. It’s that he doesn’t care and can no longer remember why anyone would.”

Ezra Levant of Rebel News: “I’m disappointed in Erin O’Toole,” adding that “right now, O’Toole is on track to be crushed like a bowl of eggs.”

Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson wrote that O’Toole “needs to do a better job,” adding the Tory leader “needs to convince us he is prime minister-in-waiting. Maybe he also needs to convince himself.”

Andrew MacDougall, a former communications director for Stephen Harper writing in the Ottawa Citizen, offered O’Toole in a backhanded way some big policy ideas, saying they “might not all be winners, but it’s surely better to get stoned for big policy than it is to lose to a tired old script.”

With an election looming, Conservatives can expect right-wing media outlets to be fairly adversarial towards O’Toole as they try to keep him as accountable as they do Trudeau.

What they read and hear may sting Conservatives at times, but such coverage is what the media will be doing — even the right-wing media — as they try to figure out what O’Toole is all about.

Bob Hepburn is a Star politics columnist and based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @BobHepburn