Doug Ford should not be quick to reject Trump comparison

Since winning the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party a week ago, former Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford has been compared to Donald Trump. And not in a good way. But as polls taken since his victory indicate, a significant number of Ontarians do not like him but will vote for him anyway in order to get rid of Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals. Ford has been asked about similarities between himself and the American president and Ford denied they are alike. The PC leader says these Trump comparisons are something made up by the media. But there are similarities between Ford and the American president and Ford should not be running away from them. After all, Trump did win.

The worst thing a candidate can do is look at a successful politician like Trump and try to imitate him. But politically speaking, Ford and his late brother, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, were Trump long before Trump was Trump. This is not something Ford should not deny. Like Trump, Ford is running on the platform of looking out for ordinary people and he is opposed not only to special interest groups but to the political establishment. Although he was a Toronto city councillor for four years, he, like Trump, is a businessman who vows he can find savings in Ontario’s bureaucracy without firing civil servants and reduce Ontario’s deficits and debt. The province has been determined to be the most indebted sub-sovereign jurisdiction in the world. Ford has pledged he will bring jobs to Ontario; the type of jobs that have fled the province in recent years as a result of the high taxes and extremely high hydro rates resulting from Ontario’s green energy program. You can tell he is like Trump when an article appeared in the liberal Globe and Mail opining he is not like Trump at all. John Ibbotson points out Ford is no Trump because Trump, racist that he is, used “racial resentment” concerning illegal Latinos from Mexico and Muslims to get elected. It is true, border security and immigration were the biggest issues during the 2016 election leading to Trump’s victory. After all, the thousands of people who attended Trump rallies did not chant “Lower taxes” or “Bring back jobs.” They chanted “Build that wall.” And it is also true that security and immigration are federal matters in Canada and have no significance in a provincial election. (Globe and Mail, March 12) But none of that alters the fact, Trump and Ford have similar goals of lowering taxes, bringing back jobs and cutting waste. It is relevant for Ford that although Trump has not yet had his wall built, he has lowered taxes, brought jobs that fled the U.S. back and reduced unemployment. If Trump could do that, Ford can do it too. Back in their city council days, both Ford brothers were similar to Trump but Ford seems to be controlling himself when he should just be himself. The Fords, like Trump, would often say politically incorrect things that angered the media. They would then get a lot of coverage from the media calling them racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic etc. Ordinary people would see the media overkill and their poll numbers would rise.

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The more bombastic Ford is, the more negative media coverage he will get and the more popular with ordinary people he will become. Ford has to reach those people who have no firm political alliances, have minimal interest in politics and get all their information from the mainstream media. Again, it’s not that he should put on an act; he should revert to the way he was when at Toronto City Council. The conventional wisdom was Premier Wynne would rather face Ford in an election than any of the other PC Party leadership candidates. After all, he is an idiot. But polls showing enough people prefer the idiot to her to give his party a majority caused her to panic. She is losing it to the extent she has even started to blurt out the truth. The PC Party’s platform, “The People’s Guarantee,” was drafted before the leadership race was called. After the platform came out, leader Patrick Brown resigned after being #MeToo-ed.” The platform called for a carbon tax to be imposed on the already overtaxed residents of Ontario. Ford and two of the three other candidates said they would not impose the tax. A fourth, Christine Elliott said she would not impose the tax now but maybe later. Wynne went on the attack saying Ford could not scrap the carbon tax without getting rid of 40,000 civil service jobs. It is doubtful the premier, frazzled by Ford’s popularity realized what she said. She had admitted the whole purpose of a carbon tax is to help fund her already bloated bureaucracy. The tax has absolutely nothing to do with reducing carbon emissions and saving the planet from climate change. Wynne also told a group of mainly non-white students they should go out and vote because if they don’t, only “old white people” will do so. While some interpret her statement to mean she has jumped on the anti-white bandwagon, her statement can be interpreted as meaning whites are superior to non-whites because the former are smart enough to have figured out how she has decimated this once great province. Only non-whites are dumb enough to re-elect her. And young people will vote for her because, living in their parents’ warm homes, they have probably never seen a hydro bill. Ford should not restrain himself. The more negative coverage he gets from the left wing media, the more he will resonate with ordinary people. Obviously Ford should not run around the province saying, “Vote for me, I’m just like Donald Trump.” But he should not run away from comparisons to the U.S. president either.