The CPC - the anti-democracy party

The Conservative Party of Canada really doesn't like the grass roots. In their time in office, they've done nothing but over-ride their local constituency associations, either protecting odious candidates, parachuting in others in snap nomination meetings and now two more candidates nominated by local constituency associations have been rejected by party central. This fresh on the heels of another override of a constituency association. It makes one wonder why the party even bothers having local riding associations.

Now, there is a reason to have riding associations, even in top-down parties like the Conservative Party of Canada. A large part of the local riding association is to be the foot soldiers during an election. It would seem that the aspect of selecting a candidate, a function the riding association performs in other parties, is only allowed for candidates that the CPC's national executive committee have hand picked. The former Reform populism is dead and buried in the Harper Conservative party. Especially telling is that one of the Ontario candidates that were rejected was spurned for discussing local issues. Um... Steve, that's what local MP's are for. They're not just numbers for you and your much coveted majority. At least that's the way they were in the old Reform/Alliance party. It seems that the CPC, who campaigned last election on a "we're not the Liberals" platform are becoming worse than the Liberals when it comes to grass roots democracy.

Not that this is nothing new. The Alberta Progressive Conservatives have been ignoring their grass roots for years and it would seem that Harper is taking a page from that play book. Of course the problem is that that only works in Alberta where the voters vote PC and CPC like sheep. In the rest of Canada this probably won't play very well. The fact that the party is rejecting the candidate it's own members, in that riding, voted for is a dangerous game. In Alberta this ignoring of the grass roots has began to have conservative voters stay home in droves. In the rest of Canada it will push voters to other parties. Harper has to realize he's the leader of a party in a, for the moment, democracy and not the chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The danger, of course, is that if Harper and his party apparatus are more than willing to ignore the desires of his own party's members imagine how willing Harper is to ignore the wishes of Canadians. Like his Alberta provincial counterparts, Harper would appear to be more than willing to ignore the wishes of the majority to push through his own personal ideology and force it upon his own party and the country as a whole. It's merely the transplantation of the Bush Republican practice to Canada. This means that Harper as the maximum leader of the party is sacrosanct and untouchable, to be worshiped by the party membership and never questioned. The problem with this, for the Conservatives, is that Harper will begin to like the smell of his own stench and start acting in a more and more dictatorial manner. This is bad for the country in the short term in that we'll have to live with the fruits of this delusion. On the other hand it will be good for the country as it will begin to turn the voter in the non-Alberta parts of the country off of the CPC.

All this is why I haven't been calling for a snap election like many in the rest of the progressive blogosphere. The more time we give the Harper government to be in power, the more unpalatable they become to the Canadian voter. Time is Harper's enemy. He needs a quick election to get the best chance of winning a majority outside of Alberta. Wait too long and he has to start pandering to his Alberta base to keep them from drifting off to some other, more "conservative" party. Start pandering too much to the base and he turns off the voter in the rest of the country. Harper needs an election sooner than later, else people begin to see the rot he and his party refuse to see like the complete disregard for the grass roots which easily translates into complete disregard for the voter. Even at this point in history that's a dangerous proposition for a politician.