Grazzt requested
A comparison of our Reform Party and the American Tea Party movement, and anything the Americans can learn from the Canadian experience with a successful fledgling grassroots movement.
Unfortunately, due to societal differences, the answer is “probably not a lot.”
First off, a quick dime’s worth of exposition for Americans unfamiliar with the history of Canadian politics: the Reform Party was a political party that spun off from the old Progressive Conservatives1 back in the late 80s, grew to dominate western Canada’s conservative political scene, and then rebranded itself as the Canadian Alliance party because they decided they needed a stupid name too before ultimately re-unifying with the remnants of the PCs to become the new Conservative Party of Canada, which the Reformers dominated far more greatly.
Now, with that exposition out of the way, the first distinguishing factor between the Reform Party and the tea partiers is that Reform had its genesis as an explicitly regionalistic party. Reform was created for no other reason than to address western Canadians’ conservative political concerns. Now, granted, you can argue that the tea partiers are disproportionately located in one portion of the United States (e.g. the South, and to a lesser extent the Midwest), but their concerns aren’t really regional in basis.
The second distinguishing factor is that the Reform Party had its real arrival as a national force (okay, still primarily a regionally based national force, but even so, one able to compete electorally across the country) because the Progressive Conservatives from whom they split off were the party in power. The PCs had attempted an ambitious and unpopular Constitutional reform which failed, plus instituted the GST2 and led the country during a period of recession and were deeply, deeply unpopular. The new, invigorated base of the Reform Party was thus former PCs. Again, you can attempt to draw similarities by suggesting that the majority of tea partiers are somewhat disaffected Republicans, but there are less Republicans than Democrats in the USA and they’re not in power. This is why you see tea partiers more interested, in a lot of cases, in “taking back” the Republican party by supporting tea-party-friendly candidates over moderate Republicans: they’re still reacting against the party in power, but the party in power is the Democrats, to whom they’re ideologically opposed.
However, the tea partiers have the same problem that Reformers did back in the day, which is that the bulk of the political mainstream sees them as stupid hicks who are, at the very least, slightly racist. The Reform Party dealt with this by disavowing or dropping support for the occasional prominent member or candidate who fucked up and said something too obviously racist or homophobic in public, but generally didn’t bother reprimanding or commenting when one of their run-of-the-mill members did so. This is at least in part the reason why the Reform Party – and later the Canadian Alliance – never really broke through in Ontario or Quebec, which are more liberal provinces than the western half of Canada generally.3
And ultimately, it’s worth remembering that the Reform Party’s success at finally becoming mainstreamed into Canadian politics (rather than a permanent opposition party) only happened when they merged with the remnants of the old Progressive Conservatives, a rebranding which made them more accessible to the Canadian general public. However, that rebranding also caused them to become slightly more moderate, or at least to accept more moderately conservative politicians into their framework. I don’t think the tea partiers are really interested in doctrinal inclusivity – mostly because a lot of them don’t have any fucking clue about policy other than they like to shout a lot – so this route to success might pose problematic for them.4
Finally, note that this rebranding created a balancing act which is problematic because Stephen Harper is probably the only politician in the entire party that the old-school moderate Tories and the right-wing Reformers will accept as a leader, and Harper can’t be the leader forever: as he straddles the fault line of the conservative movement in Canada he gets stretched further and further, and more and more of the old Reformers grow alienated. Eventually, they’ll demand that one of their idiot MPs take command, and that’ll work about as well as Stockwell Day’s tenure as leader did.
- Yes, we all know it was a stupid name. Whatever. [↩]
- New sales taxes have always been a formula for unpopularity. [↩]
- People think British Columbia is some sort of massive hippie commune because of the existence of Vancouver, but outside of Vancouver there are people so conservative they’re still not sure about these newfangled telephones. [↩]
- And finally, although I don’t want to get into the details, a parliamentary system such as Canada’s is a lot friendlier to the genesis of new parties than the United States’ governmental system is. [↩]
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12 users responded in this post
If there’s one thing about the tea party I apparently fall to understand, it’s how it represents any kind of shift in Republican politics, beyond some cute rebranding. It’s still simple reactionary rhetoric for the purpose of mobilizing voters. And considering that none of the visible leadership seems to be the Ralph Nader of the Right, I don’t think they’re going to expect their shiny new party to carry them into higher office or have the patience to build national machinery. I think whoever rides the Tea Wave (Palin, at this point) is going to take the tea party votes to the convention and establish themselves as a power broker within the GOP. Maybe that’ll turn into a congressional run, at some point. (And let’s be honest, Palin would be neither the craziest nor dumbest person to ever get into the U.S. Congress.)
If anything at all, the Tea Party is a lesson is how the romantic American notion of the legislative process lets us be bullied quickly and easily into taking bullshit seriously. We talk a big game about how much we despise Congress, but the first hint that our government isn’t a debate between two massive homogeneous blocs run by central tube brains never fails to blow our collective minds.
Wouldn’t a fully reform party type take over of the republican party by the tea party party party end with the republicans having a minority in both houses and a mad idiot in as president.
Which was pretty much 2007 wasn’t it?
“Yes, we all know it was a stupid name. Whatever.” But it also wasn’t the worst name they came up with. I still have a warm place in my heart for the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance. Add the word “Party” to the end and make it into an acronym, and you’ve got the most juvenile weekend in Canadian politics since the last time someone said something wildly inappropriate in Parliament. (which, in all likelihood, was about three days, but…)
I took issue with your “Conservative BC comment” because all I remember about BC politics is how it became a have-not province after 9/11. I did a bit of research, and the Premier has been left-wing since 1991 (NDP/Liberal), but the majority of their MPs are currently right-wing (9 NDP, 5 Liberal, 22 Conservative)*. So there we go, conservative BC. Learn something new every day.
But now I don’t understand why a population would vote left provincially and right federally. Isn’t that… I dunno… neutralization?
*Give or take. I just tallied them from http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E
Dan: In the provincial BC elections, there is no Conservative party (or at least not one that matters). The three parties are the Liberals, the NDP, and the Green (no seats, 8% of the vote), all of whom are probably to the right of their national counterparts (I could be wrong on this point, I’m not that knowledgable about their platforms).
“Reform was created for no other reason than to address western Canadians’ conservative political concerns.”
Well, yes and no. Manning always envisioned it as being a nationwide populist movement, but the concerns he was particularly interested in addressing (to his surprise) didn’t play well east of Manitoba.
I’m not an expert on the Tea Party movement, but from what I’ve heard, it started out as a small group of small-government fiscal conservatives (with the strange bedfellows of US politics, this included both libertarian-types and extreme religious social conservatives). They were primarily opposed to the reckless spending and power-grabbing of Geaorge W Bush and the Congressional Republicans of the time. But after receiving so much attention starting during the 2008 election, the movement was flooded with more mainstream big-government social conservatives, and neo-cons. So now the movement is being dominated by people like Sarah Palin, who was hated by many of the early Tea Partyers.
So now it’s becoming nothing more than a loud section of the mainstream Republican Party, which I guess is sort of like how the Reform Party combined with what was left of the Progressive Conservatives.
So, maybe they’ve already taken your advice.
Your description of British Columbia’s politics reminds me of California. The left is probably more numerous there than in BC, but there are some very hard-line conservative-type areas of the state that you rarely hear of. Illinois is even more like BC, I guess, with the Chicago being extremely left-Democrat and the rest being Indiana-style Republican. And of course, James Carville famously described Pennsylvania as ‘Pittsburgh in the West, Philadelphia in the East, and Alabama in the middle’.
I still don’t know much about Canadian politics, but it’s been fun learning about it on here. (I’ve also read some stuff on Wikipedia lately.) I love how Canada seems to be a mixture of European and American political views.
BC is …complicated. The party currently forming the Provincial government is, indeed, the (B. C.) Liberal party; however, it self-identifies as “centre-right.” This is in the fine tradition of 30-year premier W.A.C. Bennett, who used to identify his Social Credit Party as a “free enterprise coalition” formed to keep the nasty, labour/socialist New Democratic Party out of office.
The average rural British Columbia swing voter appears to be of basically socially conservative mindset, but perfectly willing to consider a New Democrat _or_ whatever “free enterprise” candidate is offered, depending on mood. From an outsider’s view, the polarised 20% of voters who support marginal parties and rising movements will vote _either_ hard left or hard right.
This only sounds strange until I explain what is really going on. But that’s for my paid newsletter.
Hint: what do Sarah Palin’s and Barack Obama’s parents have in common?
Basically, in BC, the provincial Liberals are the federal Conservatives plus right-leaning federal Liberals, and the provincial NDP are the federal NDP plus left-leaning federal Liberals.
I’m still going to have to very strongly object to the characterization of Western Canada as solidly, monolithically conservative.
There are plenty of BC lefties outside of Vancouver, especially as the cost of living in this city becomes more and more insane.
Sure there’s the Abbotsford-Langley Bible belt and the crypto-Albertans near our eastern border, but there are a number of enclaves like Nelson and Tofino, and enough scattered around to keep the NDP as our perennial opposition and occasional government.
It is plain ignorant, though, to do what Dan did, and see that we have a party in power calling itself the “Liberal Party” and simplistically conclude that it’s “left wing.” Those fuckers are total righties, at least as far as keeping their lips locked onto the sphincters of corporate power is concerned.
On the other hand, it’s heartening that all attempts to set up a full-on-solid-right party with a more explicitly aggressive social-conservative agenda have failed to get off the ground here.
And hey, remember that the NDP was pretty much born in Saskatchewan, where Tommy Douglas set up North America’s first real socialized medical system.
In short, dump all the blame for all that right-wing Western Canada shit onto Alberta.
Honestly, there really isn’t a reliable ‘center’ for party politics. Our liberal party IS leftist – if compared to our conservatives, or most stripes of politicians in either the Republican or Democratic parties’ traditional makeup in the US. The NDP sits comfortably in the pocket of unions while a legion of college-age students convince themselves that they’re casting a vote for ‘the little guy’.
We _do_ have socialist parties in Canada – two, in fact, in federal elections. Apparently they hate one another; the Canadian Communist Party bears no love for the Marxist-Lenonists, and vice-versa. They fare about as well as one might expect them to; I don’t believe either party has ever held a seat in federal legislature. They get a smattering of votes every year, along with the Sex Party, the Pot Party, the Party Party, the People Who Cannot Be Bothered To Come Up With a Decent Name for their Party Party (I think that was the name.. it was something to that extent.)… The list goes on.
Me, I’m a dyed-in-the-cloth Rhino. Don’t ask us what we’ll do if we take power.
Ask what YOU’LL do.