GO WEST, OLDER MAN — It's nearly impossible to find anybody outside the JEAN CHAREST campaign who thinks the former Quebec premier will win the Conservative leadership. PIERRE POILIEVRE 's prospects have shifted gears from "likely frontrunner" in the spring to "probable coronation" in more recent weeks. Poilievre's press secretary, ANTHONY KOCH, openly mocks Charest on the playground known as Twitter. But Charest's people have always maintained that the wily veteran of so many political battles still has a path to victory. And his strategy is plainly to talk like a winner. Enter the Western Standard's CORY MORGAN. Charest told the interviewer that he might target a Quebec riding in a future general election. But in the meantime? “If there was a seat that opened up out West, I’d love to run out West,” he said Tuesday. Flashback to Charest showing up at the Calgary Stampede and not dressing the part. — An optimistic scenario: If Charest won a western seat, he'd triumph in a part of the country where he's demonstrably unpopular with party members. An internal campaign document gaming out a Charest win — first obtained by the Toronto Sun's BRIAN LILLEY on Aug. 2 — concedes that Poilievre will run the table out west. A massive voter ID campaign fueled modeling that acknowledges the frontrunner will rack up 80 percent of riding points in Alberta and Saskatchewan on the last ballot, as well as 65 percent of British Columbia and Manitoba. The doc, which campaign operatives are still circulating three weeks before voting closes on Sept. 6, also gives up 50 percent of Ontario's points. That all adds up to 13,540 points west of Quebec. Charest lags behind at 8,970. Charest has always needed a landslide in his home province to have any chance. His team is banking on racking up 75 percent of the province's points — and healthy majorities in the Atlantic. Their final tally: Charest, 17,055. Poilievre, 16,745. — Is he out to lunch? The party circulated an email to members on Aug. 14 that pegged the number of ballots cast at 230,000 — about 34 percent of eligible voters. But Poilievre has signed up more than 300,000 members, and Charest can only win if huge numbers of them stay home. (A campaign source played up the experience of reaching Poilievre supporters who thought they'd already voted when they took out a membership. They insist that's not uncommon.) A higher turnout guarantees a Poilievre victory, which helps explain why he's hitting the road for get-out-the-vote events across the Prairies, in Ontario and Quebec. The Poilievre campaign has publicized many of those events — but not all of them. Last night, Poilievre was in Laval, Quebec. This evening, he's in Quebec City. But the campaign didn't send out a release for a convenient lunchtime event in Trois-Rivieres. Recent appearances in Windsor, Niagara and Hamilton also flew under the radar except for their intended audiences — i.e. Conservative voters who need to be reminded they still actually have to vote. A FALL ELECTION? — Speculation isn't dead, as it turns out. Conservative MP and former PATRICK BROWN leadership campaign co-chair MICHELLE REMPEL GARNER dumped a 4,000-word prediction of a fall federal vote on her Substack. — tl;dr: Rempel Garner admits the case against an election is compelling. But her thesis holds that this fall might be JUSTIN TRUDEAU's last chance at another big win. Why? "The end of the post-Harper Conservative war of succession and the start of the post-Trudeau succession war in the Liberal party." — But really, though? A former Assembly of First Nations chief of staff, DAKOTA KOCHIE, asks the obvious question. "If Trudeau was going to call an election in September (two weeks away), wouldn’t the Liberals be busy nominating candidates already?" — Better safe than sorry: MRG is taking no chances. "I’m dusting off my campaign signs and scouting out campaign space, while prepping for the fall parliamentary session. Back on the horse, giddyup." (Rempel Garner loves deploying the g-word as a mic drop.) ELSEWHERE IN TORYLAND — Leadership contender LESLYN LEWIS is up soon on JORDAN PETERSON's podcast after a convo that ran "almost three hours." Not a bad GOTV strategy, given the count that runs into the millions.
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