Bad news from Canada: Right-wing parties merger imminent

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http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1066212667289&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

<Merger talks between the Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance have made a death-bed recovery and a historic deal is imminent, sources said today. >

<The fact that lawyers have been called in to vet the agreement is of "high significance," said a Tory source, and indicates a deal is imminent. >

The right-wing movement in Canada has been broken into two parties for years, resulting in overwhelming dominance by the Liberal Party. This merger will make things competitive again.

[library_max]

1. Attention Greens.

Splitting one party into two helps the opposition party. Re-merging those two parties back into one hurts the opposition party. Do you see how this applies to your situation?

[Room101]

6. Attension- Library_Max

It is another way to conform people to two choices that serve the same corporate interests, which just have different methods. It is the carrot on the stick trick, the scare tactic that the Democrats use to scare people into voting for them.

Why earn peoples votes by representing them, when you can be lazy like the Democrats and just use fuzzy math and scare tactics. See what happens when you are limited to two choices.

[library_max]

8. Please go to Canada and convince as many right-wingers as you can.

This is a great argument for political suicide by way of splintering your vote. Please try to talk conservatives into making themselves politically irrelevant, not liberals.

[Room101]

9. Thanks, for not addressing my argument

You just proved my cynical mind right, which is a plus for my ego, and a minus for societal and political progress. Maybe Darwin was wrong; partisans have been making this same faith based arguments generation after generation and we have little to nothing to show for it.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It is time for sanity and courage to break the two party installed dictatorships.

[iverglas]

12. just an interjection

Canadian politics is not about the US. Not everything in the world is about the US.

The party structure in Canada is not like the US -- there are five parties with significant representation in the House of Commons right now, just for starters.

You are taking one news report and exploiting one little bit of information about Canada to draw conclusions that you apply in the US. It simply doesn't work.

One news report does not a Canadian winter make. The perennial Tory-Alliance party is a fun diversion on our political scene, but it is of very little consequence; it is a death dance, on both sides. What weakened both parties involved was not the splitting of "their" vote, it was simply their very own irrelevance to a large majority of Canadians. They are not going to unite and waltz on to victory by virtue of their unity.

I find it curious and pretty annoying that just about every time some news of Canadian politics is reported at DU, it virtually immediately gets turned into an attempt to grind some axe about US politics.

The thing is that there might actually be some interesting lessons to be learned by USAmericans from observing and learning about Canadian politics, and comparing and contrasting with US politics.

But that's not what this is. This is just exploitation of a pretty meaningless "foreign" factoid to score points in some debate that the factoid has virtually nothing to do with. Really, no one appreciates having their own experience drafted into the service of someone else's arguments that they might not even agree with, and essentially misconstrued and misrepresented for that purpose. Me, I'd rather just be ignored by the south of the border throngs than used in that way.

.

[library_max]

14. Fair enough. My apologies.

[iverglas]

11. uh uh

What hurt the "right wing" in Canada is that it ceased to be Canadian.

The Conservative Party was historically the party of trade protectionism, cultural nationalism, and all that jazz. Then along came Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1984, with his corruption and Ronnie Reagan duets and slimey sucking of transnational capital interests. And a decade later, Premier Mike Harris of Ontario with his parochial tax-slashing and welfare-bashing -- which were never, never characteristic of Canadian conservatism. (Think "compassionate conservatism" and what it was *supposed* to mean, and you'll have an idea. Ontario under the previous Conservative government, in the 60s and 70s, was about what you would have expected if JFK had still been in power in the US, without the warmongering. Camelot, essentially.)

Yeah, yeah. I'm ignoring Alberta. Well, Alberta's always been Texas, the rest of us had just managed to ignore it until 20 years ago.

Mulroney and Harris smashed and doomed Canadian conservatism. The Alliance is not Canadian conservatism; it is and always will be a bunch of tinpot goosesteppers trying to crawl out of their own backwoods swamp onto the national stage, while history passes them by. The tiny pointless rump of federal Tories that remain keep trying to hitch their wagon to what they desperately perceive as the Alliance engine, and the Alliance desperately wants the Tories' respectability and old-money cachet, but nobody else actually cares.

With Liberal Prime-Minister-in-waiting Martin poised to start putting his jackboot to us, there'd actually be an opening for some of that old style Red Toryism, since Martin will do his utmost to drag the Liberals back to the right after the token baby-steps to the left Chrétien has been making. But I'm not expecting to see any new Flora MacDonalds or David MacDonalds emerging in the near future.

The guardianship of social responsibility now falls entirely in the lap of the NDP, and we can only hope that Martin gets far enough out of step with what seems to be a slight swing back toward a collective conscience among Canadians that the Liberal mask will be seen to have slipped even farther.

But the "right" -- the Tories and Alliance? Fossils. And they just can't compete with Paul Martin and his boys when it comes to being right-wing, anyhow.

Nothing at all to do with splitting the right wing, in Canada. The Tories and the Alliance just aren't the same thing -- they aren't different degrees of one thing, they're different things.

Just like our New Democratic Party, despite the popular saying, is not just "Liberals in a hurry" ... and the US Democratic party is not "the left".

.

[Flying_Pig]

13. Thanks forthis iverglas, ...I've learned a lot...

n/t

[TrogL]

2. Wishful thinking

They still have to ratify it in December (I suspect Conservatives will shoot it down), elect a leader, put together a platform, raise funds and whole lotta other stuff in time for a spring election.

I suspect the Liberals may lose a few seats, but not many.

The right wing movement is broken because it does not reflect the views of most Canadians.

[Sephirstein]

3. On the bright side...

I'd much rather Mike Harris leading the Reich than Stephen Harper.

And I hate Harris.

On Edit:

And what the fuck? Elsie Wayne opposes this? She's the only Tory I'd vote Alliance against if it were the best way to vote her out. (She's that fucking bad.)

[Maple]

4. Won't make any difference

What they're selling, Canadians ain't buying.

They are, after all, merging because they are BOTH so low in the polls.

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7. Combined don't they approach 30% in the polls?

That isn't great and is significantly behind the Liberals but if the Liberals stumble they are within striking distance.

[Newsjock]

5. Alternate views

Trying to absorb the Alliance into the PC could mean that many PCers will flee the party (or just not vote) when confronted with the Alliance's far-right drivel.

Or the Alliance might find itself unable to get its more extreme views into party platforms.

This is really just an admission by the Alliance that they've become irrelevant in national politics.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

10. The Alliance scares the sh*t out of me.

And I live in Edmonton, the Canadian hot-spot of conservatism.

[TrogL]

16. Actually, that's Calgary

Edmonton's a bit looser in the loafers (or whatever the expression is).

[tom_paine]

15. Canadians, prepare for Anschluss

It is not a uestion of "if".

If the Busheviks remain in charge of Imperial Amerika, it is "when".

Don't say nobody warned you.