According to the Globe and Mail, the merger of the Alliance Party and the Progressive Conservative Party is facing the prospects of a split at the upcoming policy convention. Or, I am lead to think, this is what the author of the article hopes. Here are some tidbits.
...An internecine battle within the Conservative Party has set the stage for a nasty showdown over emotionally charged issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage that could be waged on the floor of the party's policy meeting next month in Montreal.
Moderate Conservatives say they are being frozen out of the convention by leader Stephen Harper, whom they accuse of controlling delegate selection and allowing many of the spots to go to hard-line social conservatives.
Let me let you in on a little secret of democracy at the riding level. I went to my local Riding Associations meeting this week to see how the whole thing works. The riding could elect 10 delegates to go to the meeting with one having to be a youth delegate. Can someone explain to me when 28 became a youth? People on the floor nominated delegates and if there were more than 10 then there would be an election. However it was like pulling teeth to get volunteers to pay the $500 delegate fee plus the cost to get there. In the end we got the minimum number of volunteers and the election was not required.
Did Stephen Harper freeze anyone out? Did the spots go to hard-line social conservatives? No. The went to whoever would go.
As an aside, could someone please link to article that uses the phrase hard-line social liberal, hard-line environmentalist or hard-line tax and spender.
...The brewing hostility has caused some members to suggest the party, formed less than a year ago through a merger of the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives, may undergo a split similar to the one that occurred in the late 1980s when the Reform Party broke away.
Again, I saw absolutely no evidence of this. There was some concern expressed that the media would do everything it could to spin the convention as a split but the party is united in its' determination to remove the Liberals from power.
The Tory convention is seen by many as a key opportunity for the party to head toward the political centre after the summer election campaign. But the party is split over whether public fights on socially conservative issues are a good idea.
As Andrew Coyne pointed out in an article earlier this week, the CPC position on SSM is, alomost be definition, the middle position or the political centre. Did it gain Stephen Harper any kudos from the mainstream media?
I really this whole thing is much to do about nothing. There will always be splits in mainstream parties. And in case you aren't paying attention the split in the Liberal Party is about to bust wide open and an election is going to be the direct result. I can't for tuesday testimony from Jean Chretien, "You wan da truth, you cand handle da truth! When you have a truth it is truthen!"
