Andrew Scheer Made Stephen Harper Look Charming

It is with no pleasure that I come to announce: R.I.P. to a real one. Andrew Scheer was confirmed dead by self-roasting at approximately noon Thursday in Ottawa. He is survived by several sweaty premiers and the lasting public shame of becoming an obscure and funny footnote in Canadian history. Mourners are asked to donate to the Conservative Party/Scheer Family Education Fund in lieu of flowers.

Yes, Andrew Scheer has finally resigned. Up to now, he had been doggedly clinging to Conservative Party leadership despite losing the recent election to a widely-disliked costume enthusiast. But suddenly, Scheer informed the Tory caucus yesterday morning that he’ll resign as soon as they select a new leader.

This abrupt about-face is not a concession to his many internal enemies, nor the impossible decision to “put [his] party first and [his] family first.” Instead, it has been suggested he was pushed out for using Conservative party funds to bankroll part of his children’s private school education and the party brass is in revolt. (Both Scheer and the party have denied this.) Apparently not everyone knew executive director Dustin van Vugt had personally authorized the Scheer slush fund! Totally normal communications breakdown. Ideal, even: for the Lord saith the right hand should know not what the left is doing.

Sincerely though: you absolutely love to see it.

There are many threads in the story of the 2019 federal election but one of them is the utter unravelling of Andrew Scheer. Touted as a sober middle class everyman Canadian, he was alienating in a way that made Stephen Harper seem positively radiant. His only non-politics job was a questionable summer internship for a Saskatchewan insurance broker and otherwise looking visibly sexually repressed in public. In retrospect it’s nearly unbelievable Scheer won the leadership at all—a hair over Maxime Bernier!—but such were the desperate days of Trudeaumania 2.

Scheer was bullshit from start to finish, his persona a thin veneer of fibbery established by confident repetition. You just keep making stuff up and repeating it and eventually it might start to make true imprints on reality. Or that’s the theory, anyway. In practice, you have to be convincing to work a con job. (See: President Donald Trump.)

The Andrew Scheer Conservative Party was not convincing or even confident. The package being sold to Canadians was bogus and the salesman transparently false. Scheer wilted in the spotlight and carried all the gravitas of a smirking 12-year-old snitch. Of course he was wading out of a pool of grease and donor money to whine about ethics and moral authority. It was inevitable. The only thing more outsized than the shamelessness of Scheerism is its complete ineptitude. The grift isn’t even good.

Goodnight sweet prince, angels sing thee to thy rest, etc. Have a nice warm pint of milk and go lie down out of it for awhile. No matter how expensive that Conservative-funded private education is, it will never teach as powerful a lesson in the value of being true to yourself.

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