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mygif

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.

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mygif

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?

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mygif

“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…)

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mygif

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

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mygif

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).

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mygif

“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.

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Mary Warner said on February 14th, 2010 at 3:42 pm

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.

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Mary Warner said on February 14th, 2010 at 3:56 pm

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.

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Lawnmower Boy said on February 14th, 2010 at 3:59 pm

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?

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mygif

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.

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mygif

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.

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LightlyFrosted said on February 17th, 2010 at 1:54 am

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.

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