May gives Green light to vote Grit
By Lorrie Goldstein April 4 TorontoSun
Federal Green party Leader Elizabeth May is a big fan of Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. She's even called his tenure as the last Liberal environment minister "magnificent."
Logically, then, a prominent Vancouver environmentalist last week jumped from the Green ship to run for Dion's Liberals in the next election. According to May's reasoning, that makes perfect sense. After all, in addition to being a huge fan of Dion, May has made it crystal clear she is NOT a fan of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on environmental issues and argued the single most important thing is to defeat him in the next election.
May's even committed herself to run in the Conservative Central Nova riding of Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, in a bid to stick it to Harper.
Given that, Briony Penn, the (former) Green party supporter in Vancouver, must have figured why not team up with the party that has best chance of stopping Harper right now -- the Liberals, not the Greens.
Perhaps, under May's stalwart leadership, more Green candidates will jump to the Liberals.
Maybe people who were thinking of voting for the Greens because of their stands on environmental issues will now strategically vote for the Liberals instead. After all, May has given Dion her green seal of approval.
In fact, that's what some Green party members, who are not big fans of Dion, are worried about.
Some are questioning May's political strategy. Assuming she has one.
As two-time Green candidate Andrew Lewis, who is May's critic for natural resources, recently told CanWest News: "I am very upset with what might be happening. If it carries on down this path, it'll undermine the Green party. What Elizabeth May is implying is that, yes, we should vote strategically, for the Liberals if necessary, and that Dion is green enough."
That is what she's implying.
It will certainly be interesting to see how many Green MPs May helps to elect by praising Dion, especially since the Greens have never elected an MP.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
will more green's morph themselves into a liberal?
Posted by audacious at 5.4.07
Labels: canada politics
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(Atom)
3 comments:
Your post is just mean spirited innuendo.
No green-minded person would ever jump to Conservatives, Liberals, or NDPs because of those party's military, social, health, poverty, respect, etc stated beliefs and proven stances. Greens are not single issue. Green is a philosophy defined by the Global Charter.
True, some former green members change to other parties to wield, short term, what they perceive to be more personal influence environmentally. But even then I'd argue that "green" has entered the lexicon largely because the Green Party is gaining ever more support and other parties must change their tunes .... which is great. And saying that its "great" does not make me a Liberal sympathizer. Some people just feel the need to be players in their own, limited personal little worlds.
Most greens are not opportunists nor even politicians but rather are idealists. We live in hope, and no crass opportunism will change that.
By the way, good blog. Keep up the crusade.
(PS. My post tomorrow on Trenton Works will be a green criticism ... but not mean spirited innuendo as is yours.)
That post was by Lorrie Goldstein. I do so apologize for for attributing it to you. And you are doing a service by reproducing the post in the blog.
I did so miss that. Early morning, hair-trigger sensitivity today. Sorry about that.
np herbinator ... :)
Post a Comment