20 hours Ago By Murray Mandryk
Article content Somewhere buried deep within Regina’s landfill you may find a red Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat. If you find it, consider returning it to the rightful owner, Warren McCall, the former NDP Regina Elphinstone MLA and New Democrat caucus chief of staff. The veteran NDP insider was gifted the treasured item — along with a copy of that day’s Washington Post headlined, “Dawn of New Era” — by then-economy and Crown Investments Corp.
minister Jeremy Harrison in January 2017 after Harrison returned from Trump’s first inauguration. McCall admitted it might have been a retaliatory gesture in response to the then-NDP MLA dragging back some swag from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for Harrison after McCall and others with the Saskatchewan Party and chief electoral officer went to the U.S.
during the 2016 campaign. What became of McCall’s MAGA hat, a running gag in the hallways of the Saskatchewan legislature, is uncertain. The former NDP MLA thinks it might have been unceremoniously left behind in one of his office moves and then “accidentally” thrown out.
The mildly humorous story speaks to a couple things. First, it speaks to a time not so long ago that was quite different — when politics might have been a slightly milder version of today’s blood sport. Of course, those were also the pre-Scott Moe days before the dramatic rise in tensions between the NDP and the Saskatchewan Party.
But arguably, more importantly, these were the days when any association that a right-wing Canadian politician might have had with Donald Trump meant something a little different. Back then, many saw Trump as buffoonish. His MAGA brand — especially before his first inauguration and before the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything in politics — was largely seen as political branding of the new right-wing machismo.
It wasn’t seen as part of the now-sinister Trump agenda of taking over Greenland, the Panama Canal, handing Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin and using economic coercion through tariffs to force Canada into becoming the 51st state. Obviously, this is not even what the vast majority of the conservative-minded in this country want. Obviously, Canadians on the right have been somewhat entrapped by allegiances to a Trump-like philosophy now gone horribly awry.
There again, conservatives only have themselves to blame. After all, there is far greater admiration for Trump in the conservative ranks than elsewhere. Polls show while supporters of most every other party are near unanimously opposed to notions leading to a U.
S. takeover of Canada, such adamant opposition is slightly weaker in conservative ranks. But even more puzzling is Canadian Conservatives being rather even split in their opinion of Trump compared with supporters of other parties who have an overwhelmingly negative opinion of the U.
S. president. And if mimicry is the greatest form of flattery, consider how Trump’s actions have become the template for a lot of conservatives.
Lawlessness and disruption of trade at the U.S. borde r was exactly what we got from the Freedom Convoy, whose leaders are now being sentenced in court.
And while conservatives — including Saskatchewan Party Premier Scott Moe suggested they only supported “legal” protests — they were far more concerned about whatever might have made Trudeau’s life more difficult than matters of legal principle. Remind you of anyone? Of course, even within conservative ranks there have been varying degrees, from those who vehemently oppose him to out-and-out Trumpers. But after appealing to anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and those opposed to Trans and LGBQT2S+ rights as Trump has, there is added difficulty for conservatives like Moe to distance themselves from Trump’s agenda, which now includes making Canada the 51st state.
Had Moe — or other conservative politicians in this country now faced with the same dilemma — drew a line in the sand, they wouldn’t be facing credibility concerns today. But they didn’t. And many still emulate Trump .
.. or at least, some of his philosophies.
Somehow, those MAGA hats aren’t as funny as they used to be. Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. Our websites are your destination for up-to-the-minute Saskatchewan news, so make sure to bookmark thestarphoenix.
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