5.30ish Tomorrow Is Vote On Gun Registry
Liberals will be watching Liberals, and I would hope same could be said for Dippers re. NDP, but they just seem to have become completely abject apologists for Jack & Co. Anyway, if vote passes, might be time to revisit nomination meetings for all: some sitting MPs might need the reminder of the exigencies of party democracy to keep them clever.
posted by Eugene Forsey Liberal @ 7:28 PM
4 Comments:
At 7:53 PM,
Anonymous said…
If this thing passes because some Liberal MPs vote for it, I will be quite pissed.
At 10:21 PM,
Trevor said…
That's right, if you don't toe the Toronto party line you don't get nominated. That will win you some rural votes for sure. How many more seats in Toronto are there for the Libs to win?
Funny you talk about party democracy when the key word is democracy ... that means representing the voters.
At 11:45 PM,
Anonymous said…
Um Eugene open nominations would ENCOURAGE MORE OF THIS!
You really think these NDPers/Libs considering voting to repeal the gun registry really believe in that themselves?
No it's because they represent rural ridiings where the gun registry is hated and they FEAR being defated if they don't vote to repeal it.
Were you to have open nominations in those ridings a gun registry hater is far more likely to win because the voters there feel the same and would sign up to support them.
I support the gun registry but you might want to re-think your proposed remedy here.
At 12:03 PM,
Eugene Forsey Liberal said…
Anon@11.45: I think you forget the motivating power of hot button issues. Liberal MPs who are voting not their consciences but their electoral prospects are worried about the general electorate. But to get motivated gun control advocates to buy party memberships and designate their riding as, for instance, Thunder Bay, is very doable. Further, while a plurality or majority of the general electorate in such ridings may be opposed to gun control, there is always, at a minimum, a strong minority which is passionately in favour, all the more passionate for being in the minority (most federalist Federalists I know I are from Saguenay, separatist Separatists from West Island, reddest Liberals and most socialist Dippers from Alberta, etc.) By example, take Thunder Bay, again, where I happen to know, by happenstance, a goodly number of hitherto non-partisan granola types, who could most easily be motivated to slap down the small membership fee so as to affect the gun control debate. And as passionate pro-gun types gravitate to the Cons and hate Libs, there is little possibility of an incumbent Liberal MP, facing a nomination fight over his vote on this issue, being able to motivate and deliver enough pro-gun types to counter the gun control advocates. So I do indeed maintain that Liberal MPs who are planning on voting counter to party platform, policy & legislation, not out of any deep consideration of conscience (of which, on gun control, there is none in any event) but rather out of electoral fear, may indeed be persuaded to reconsider their position in light of these facts were there open nominations for even sitting MPs.
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