January 3, 2010

Green Party Backgrounder

By admin

Stuart Herzog posts a couple of wide-ranging background pieces about the Canadian version of the Green Party and descirbes why it’s unlikely that they will be a success in Canada.

Original link here and background piece on the Failure of Green Electoralism.

He points out two critical elements for me that tend to get completely screwed up and ignored by the media in Canada:

the Green Party has been taken over by the disenfranchised Right, and
it represents small-c conservative and middle class values.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to toss my radio out the window or chuck a shoe at the TV when some mandarin tries to make us believe that the popularity of the Green Party leads to a direct fall in support for the NDP. Once you scrape the surface on their people and their platforms, you realize that the media couldn’t be more wrong.

In fact, as Green Party membership shrinks or grows, it’s going to have an impact on the Conservatives and possibly Liberals. The only people that bail on the NDP are those that follow party politics on a superficial level. Oops: that could be a lot!!

Anyways, over the past few years, I’ve considered supporting the Greens in Canada, but because their party leaders put too much faith in the market, they prove themselves to be an oxy-moron: you can’t solve market problems with market solutions.

Thank you Stuart for these insightful pieces!

TagsGreen Party of Canada

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Skinny Dipper

14 years ago

In the last federal election, I think Ekos did a poll and asked the second preferences of voters. If people could not vote Green, their supporters would go 2:2:1 to the NDP:Liberals:Conservatives. While the hierarchy of the Green Party may be blue-green, the voting support still leans red-green (not the same as the character). It is correct that the Green Party is not predominantly stealing votes from the NDP.

The next federal election will be a challenge for the Green Party. I think there will be less of a focus on the environment and more on the economy. Unless the Greens can convince voters that their environmental policies make economic sense, the Greens will be on the sidelines of the election campaign.

Personally, I think there will be an election sometime in April or May. If it’s the month of May, then several MPs will be eligible for pensions as they will have served six years in Parliament.