[on the Mayor Rob Ford scandal in Toronto, 2013] Of all his enablers, the most culpable are the strategists, the ones who fashioned his image as the defender of the little guy - the suburban strivers, against the downtown elites with their degrees and their symphonies - the ones who turned a bundle of inchoate resentments into the Ford Nation. It is the same condescending populism, the same aggressively dumb, harshly divisive message that has become the playbook for the right generally in this country, in all its contempt for learning, its disdain for facts, its disrespect of convention and debasing of standards. They can try to run away from him now, but they made this monster, and they will own him for years to come.
