This is no mere leadership race. A ferocious battle is underway for the heart and soul — and head — of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives.It is not pretty, no matter whom your preferred candidate and whatever your party sympathies. Stay tuned — and if you didn’t tune in to Thursday’s first televised debate among Tories, do your democratic duty and watch at least some of it online.For it is not to be missed. For better or for worse, there is no other way to glimpse the puerile, juvenile, infantile and facile political theatre on display by the grown-up politicians vying to lead the party that is now leading in the polls, and poised to govern the province.Read more: PC leadership candidate knocks better-known rivals, blames low student test scores on sex edOntario’s once-proud PC party may emerge from this renewal process having regressed — with nary an idea for the future economic, educational or technological challenges facing our province. Four candidates (three serious contenders, one single-issue contestant) were behind the microphones at TVO.But a fifth political spirit — the ghost of Patrick Brown — loomed kicking and screaming over the show, the elephant in the studio and the albatross on the screen.Doug Ford, Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney (not to mention fringe anti-sex-ed crusader Tanya Granic Allen) variously denounced and renounced him in every way for sexual misconduct and mismanagement of internal party affairs. And most importantly, for misappropriating or misstating the Progressive Conservative vision.These leadership aspirants claim they will now reclaim the party’s heart, head and soul. But the soul-destroying spectacle gets worse.Quite apart from condemning one another, the candidates were at war with themselves — contradicting their own past positions and demolishing the party platform that, until last month, the party had put forward collectively as a carefully ...
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