openpolitics.com

Mr. Ford snuck through to the leadership on a voting system that ranked ballots. He won neither the popular vote nor the greatest number of constituencies.

.. But the Progressive Conservative machine is behind him already. It operates on inherited loyalties, antipathy against scandal-plagued opponents, time-for-a-change sentiments and basic self-interest.

.. Conservatism itself has changed. The Conservatism of law and order, of common decency and of fiscal responsibility has been rendered null and void. After the last provincial election, which the Liberals won handily, Mr. Ford, then a Toronto city councilor, prescribed “an enema from top to bottom” for the caucus he just inherited. The effluent is now lapping at his feet.

.. boasting about a historically large victory in the offing. His bragging has an all-too familiar ring stateside. To stand with Mr. Ford is to express rage — and this rage will take its customary atavistic forms.

.. The current premier, Kathleen Wynne, the first lesbian elected to the post, introduced a modernized sex-education curriculum to the province’s public school systems. Just days after his election, Mr. Ford pledged to remove it, a policy that has support among some new immigrant communities, who tend to be more socially conservative.

He’s also running the standard Ford playbook. Elites are people who sip “Champagne with their pinkies in the air.” (His family’s label and packaging company is said to make tens of millions in annual sales.)

.. His infamous brother, when you get right down to it, was only the mayor of Toronto, which is not a very powerful position. Toronto’s “weak mayor” system ensures that its leader only gets one vote on the city council. In Canada, it’s actually the premier of a province who matters.

.. Canada’s Constitution calls for “peace, order and good government”; it is hard to imagine anyone who could fulfill that mandate less.

.. Mr. Ford’s sweep in as quiet and stable a place as Ontario points to a broader global crisis from which apparently there is no escape. Conservatism is no longer a political ideology in the recognized sense, but a repository of loathing and despair. It’s where people thrust their hatred of modernity — of globalism and multiculturalism and technocratic expertise, but also of the democracy

.. By giving high office to buffoons, by choosing thugs as their representatives and by reveling in nastiness for its own sake, the Conservative brand now is principally a marker of contempt for political order itself.

Conservatism has meant many things to many people around the world. Now, just about everywhere, it looks a lot like a raised middle finger; Ford and friends are the latest to salute.