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opinion

Some call it Shakespearean, but really, it's Kardashian. The story of Dimitri and Eve is what happens when two people with vastly inflated senses of entitlement get together and wind each other up.

Sooner or later, they get shot down.

Dimitri Soudas, the now former executive director of the Conservative Party, meddled in his fiancée Eve Adams's nomination race after he signed a contract saying that he wouldn't. In an e-mail to The Huffington Post last week, he explained why. He was "madly in love" with Ms. Adams. She had fallen down and had a concussion and he had to help her. His "choice was clear." He was going to "stand with the woman whose hand I'll be holding when I'm an old fart."

Sweet. It kind of reminds you of the Duke of Windsor, if you overlook the word "choice." Except that the duke did his duty and quit his job. Mr. Soudas didn't feel obliged to. Instead, he used his position to bully and fire the people who were trying to thwart his fiancée's political ambitions. The mystery is how he thought he could get away with it, especially when people in the party had warned from the start that he might do exactly what he did.

Despite their efforts to appear sympathetic (including a photo op with borrowed dogs), few are feeling particularly sorry for the star-crossed lovers. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper's communications director, Mr. Soudas wasn't all that nice to the media. The media are now getting their revenge.

Ms. Adams isn't particularly popular either. Judging by her nomination antics, "obnoxious" would be a better word. Although the Conservatives are playing up their handful of female MPs, they have chosen to pass her over. She has the disadvantage of looking like a former pageant queen, which, in fact, she is. She is tall and willowy with big expressive features and lots of hair, which is much blonder than it used to be. Mr. Soudas is short and thick, with far less hair. So devoted are they that they dressed up like twins for their 2013 Christmas card, posed together cheek to cheek in red.

Nor has their romance won them many fans. When they met in May, 2011, both were married to other people. She had one child; he had three, including a baby. On June 1, he announced his resignation as communications director so that he could spend more time with his family. "Priority 1 my wife and 3 kids," he tweeted. By November, they were an item.

Like Mr. Soudas, Ms. Adams goes after what she wants with ferocious tenacity. She, too, gets mad when crossed. Just ask the hapless Ottawa car-wash owner. When his car wash didn't get all the ice off her bumper, she blocked the traffic and demanded a refund. The car-wash owner was so annoyed that he complained to the Prime Minister. Ms. Adams (who says it was all a misunderstanding) subsequently apologized.

Her current woes began when she decided (obviously with Mr. Soudas's enthusiastic encouragement ) that she wanted a better seat. The trouble with her current seat is that she might lose it next time. But the new seat next door, which was created through redistribution, is safe. That makes the nomination a prize worth having. If she gets it, her $163,700 salary will be secure for a long, long time.

But she won't get it. The party will veto her. She and Mr. Soudas have been sentenced to the outer darkness reserved for people who make the Prime Minister look bad – no matter how much blood and sweat they have given for the cause. Ms. Adams's political career is finished, and she's the only one who doesn't seem to know it.

Mr. Soudas ought to break it to her. Even love can't make a guy that blind.

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