Trampled

Elizabeth May tells us that her idea of a grassroots movement is a finely manicured lawn carefully maintained to suit the aesthetic preferences of its owners:

May said she didn’t want to thwart local efforts towards co-operation with other parties, but that she thinks she, Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair should be the ones to discuss how grassroots co-operation should work.

To be clear, there were plenty of problems with the Kelowna red-green pact which May seems to have nixed: it didn't make a lick of sense in terms of either reciprocity (since the Liberals were offering nothing in return for a Green candidate's withdrawal) or anticipated outcomes (since the NDP is in a far better position than the Libs to challenge the Cons in the seat). And so it's entirely justifiable that the deal itself would come under scrutiny.

But it's one thing for May to highlight where a specific arrangement has gone awry, and quite another for her to say generally that the plebes should be quiet until party leaders have decided how their activity should be channelled. And if anybody harboured any illusions that the Greens saw their own grassroots activists as significant political agents rather than easily-controlled minions, May seems to have decisively shattered them.

On strategic manipulations

Come to think of it, I have to wonder whether the Green candidate's withdrawal in Longueuil-Pierre-Boucher has anything to do with the party's belated rush for filler candidates.

After all, the Greens would have had awfully little chance to vet whether or not people responding to their last-minute e-mail call for candidates might have had other party affiliations. And if the Libs were counting on a late-campaign strategic voting pitch from Elizabeth May in any event, what better way to bolster that message than by having some of their own supporters take on paper candidacies to give the impression that genuine Green candidates were switching sides?

Now, we don't know for sure if that's what happened in this case. But there's every reason to be extremely wary of any Green candidates - particularly late-nominated ones - throwing their support to the Libs.

Update: CBC reports that Moreau is a self-professed Green member since 1993. But it's worth noting that there's still some reason for skepticism considering how the Libs are playing fast and loose with reality in their other endorsement announcement today.

Open questions

Greg has offered his suggestions for the first question Elizabeth May should expect to have to answer about the Red Green pact. But particularly based on today's La Presse report, here's another suggestion for the debates or elsewhere:

You have talked about the importance of preventing Stephen Harper and his Conservative government from being re-elected, and entered into a special arrangement with the Liberals intended to make that happen. In the interests of stopping Harper, do you plan:
(a) to order your party to stand down against New Democrat or Bloc candidates who have a chance to defeat Conservatives to the same extent as you do with Liberal opponents?
(b) to endorse Jack Layton for Prime Minister if the New Democrats are polling ahead of the Liberals by the end of the campaign?
And if the answer to either is "no", then why does your concern with stopping Harper extend only to parties who are willing to help you win your seat?

Unreformed

In the wake of the Green's acceptance of an MP deemed unfit for office by the Libs in an effort to elbow their way into leaders' debates, one of the main talking points from Green backers (see the comments at pogge has been that even if the move reeks of cynical political calculation, it's a necessary response to an unfair electoral system. While I fully agree that the current system needs fixing, though, it's worth noting that the new talking point only serves as a reminder of how empty the Greens' last major publicity stunt proved to be.

Here's my commentary from the aftermath of the Red Green deal - at a time when the Greens claimed to have secured a commitment from Stephane Dion to work with them toward electoral reform, even as Dion's words and actions suggested otherwise:

(T)here's plenty of reason to be skeptical about Dion's personal interest in electoral reform. And today's announcement doesn't do anything to suggest that the Greens have managed to change that fact.

Which isn't to say that today's announcement can't be the start of a genuine sea change. But the next necessary step is for Dion to prove to Canadians that he actually values the possibility of electoral reform - by speaking out about it personally, making sure it receives prominent placement in the Libs' next party platform, and taking on the inertia within his party head-on. And if that doesn't happen, then today's words can only be seen an attempt to fool the Greens' base, rather than the first step toward anything positive.

Well, we now have a year and a half worth of evidence as to what the supposed agreement about electoral reform was worth. So can anybody remember the numerous times when Dion has followed up on what May claimed to be an important area of agreement by making electoral reform a top priority and inspiring his followers to support the cause? Me neither.

Now, if May actually believed she'd won some meaningful commitment from Dion on electoral reform, she would seem to have ample reason to call him out for failing to live up to the deal. But there too, there's been nothing but the sound of crickets chirping.

Yet having already been misled into thinking May had won some ground in pushing for a more fair electoral system, her supporters are now using May's failure as justification for her abandoning the Greens' supposed commitment to ethics in politics.

Once again, May's presence has only served to reinforce the problems with politics as usual rather than to provide any break from them. Which offers yet another reason why voters looking for a change from the same old cynical politics won't get it from E-Me and her home for wayward MPs.

On soft support

For all the discussion that the Harris-Decima poll on Canadian attitudes toward a carbon tax has spawned, I'm surprised one point seems to have slipped through the cracks. Based on the poll's party breakdown, the second-lowest support for a carbon tax was found...among Green Party voters, with under half indicating their approval.

This after the Greens have been flogging the carbon tax issue for years, and with Elizabeth May calling for three times the level of tax being pushed by the Libs.

Now, I'm not aware of any particular groundswell among the Greens' candidates or supporters to reverse course on the carbon tax itself. So the issue doesn't figure to be one which will actually tear apart what party structure May may have cobbled together.

But it's still striking that the Greens' current "supporters" aren't any more likely than voters in general to agree with its signature policy. And that has to offer reason to think that the Greens' current support levels are based more on vote parking than on any agreement with (or even awareness of) the party's direction.

A failed coalition

Let's grant the Red Green alliance this much: they at least save their opponents time by rebutting their own core premises. Here's Elizabeth May's idea of helpful advice for the NDP:

The recent byelection results show the NDP should end its feud with the Green Party and start figuring out how to work together to topple the minority Conservative government, says Green Leader Elizabeth May...

"My advice to (NDP Leader Jack) Layton which is open and really in the spirit of co-operation -- rethink the policy of constantly denigrating the Greens and acting hostile towards us."

Now, one would think that May would then be careful to make sure to put her money where her mouth is by not putting her primary efforts toward ridings where she can actually topple the Cons. But aside from May's decision to personally attack a riding where a strong NDP candidate was already on the verge of knocking off Peter MacKay, here's May's idea of an additional target riding for her party:

May noted her party doesn't have a regional base like the Conservatives or Bloc Quebecois, but she thinks they do have pockets of support.

She named Vancouver Centre as a possible breakthrough riding in the next general election.

That's right, May plans to stop Harper by listing as her party's second-best prospect in the country a riding where the Libs and the NDP already run 1st and 2nd respectively.

Meanwhile, it would indeed be nice to see a reduction in opposition denigration. But while May's complaint against the NDP doesn't have any particular basis in fact, an obvious example of an actual insult toward the Greens (along with the NDP) comes from Red Green's other wing in the same article:

(Said Bob Rae), "(t)he NDP and the Greens can't replace Mr. Harper. They can snap at his heels, they can bark at his car, but they can't actually get in the car and drive it.

Needless to say, there's nothing like comparing one's opponents to dogs to help raise the tone of Canada's political dialogue.

Of course, May will all too likely be happy to overlook a real slight from the Libs in order to continue whining about imagined ones from the NDP. But all indications are that neither May nor her coalition partner is the least bit interested in actually living up to the purposes which May's backroom deal was supposed to further.

And based on the obvious bad faith on display from both May and her Lib allies, there's no reason at all for the NDP to allow themselves to be dragged down into the same hypocritical morass as well.

Pointers

A couple of quick links for those who haven't seen the posts yet...

First, IP points out the Greens' remarkable lack of any apparent comment on the prospect of bringing down the Cons over their environmental negligence. I'll add only that even if there isn't an official larger deal between the Greens and Libs, it could be that May has simply decided that it's easier to say nothing about the party's signature issue than to risk having to answer questions about how she can justify cutting back-room deals premised on the need to remove Deceivin' Stephen from power when the other party involved is itself refusing to do just that.

Second, Alison highlights the contrast between the Cons' talk about the importance of Radarsat-2 to Canada's sovereignty, and their apparent intention to facilitate the sale of the satellite to an American arms manufacturer. If anything, this story would seem to be the one that deserves more focus from the opposition parties - as the gap between the Cons' rhetoric and their desire to auction off Canadian interests has seldom been quite this stark.

A thought experiment

Over the last couple of years, a consistent theme has developed among the now-Red Green alliance. In an effort to blame the federal NDP while painting the Libs as innocent victims completely unresponsible for their own demise, apologists have tried desperately to find evidence of a grand conspiracy against the Libs. And in the process, they've accused the NDP of being in bed with the Cons based on the most ridiculous of "evidence", ranging from Con supporter entreaties rejected by NDP supporters, to idle speculation about things which will never happen.

But let's put to a test just what kind of principle underlies the Red Green position.

Suppose there were an election pitting a long-time centre-left government against a right-wing opposition party which had spent a decade trying to moderate its image. Suppose the governing party had brought up the election's most progressive ideas on child care, the environment, health care, and electoral reform, while the opposition's platform consisted largely of targeted tax cuts (but with enough promised spending to take away some of the fear factor).

Now let's add a third party to the mix - one with nowhere near either the current seat count or the current support level of either of the two main parties, and whose most recognizable contribution in recent years had been to support the left-wing government when it was limited to a minority.

Suppose that third party tried to position itself as an ostensibly left-wing alternative to replace the "tired" government. But in doing so, the third party failed to offer any substantially different left-wing policies from those already proposed (and indeed implemented in part) by the governing party, instead running primarily on a platform of accountability in an effort to build up a perceived need for change.

And suppose as well that the third party not only withheld its fire from the right-wing party, but outright conceded the election to the conservative party in an explicit bid to position itself as a future opposition.

I bet those principled Red Greeners would be positively howling with outrage at the third party's damage to the progressive cause, and probably pointing out the likelihood of an active conspiracy between the third party and the right-wing party. Don't you?

Folding up the tent

A couple of notes on the news that the Green riding association in St. Catharines is considering dropping out of the race in order to support paleo-Lib Walt Lastewka.

First, it's worth contrasting the process being followed with that applied to the Axis of Ego deal. Whatever one thinks of whether or not the Greens should be abandoning what appears to have been relatively fertile ground in St. Catherines, at the very least the issue is being discussed publicly by the riding's grassroots members before the Greens commit to anything. And that more democratic way of making any accommodations makes the top-down impositions from Dion and May in their respective ridings appear all the less reasonable by comparison.

At the same time, though, it's worth pointing out that the Lib candidate doesn't appear the slightest bit interested in any kind of deal, while the Greens appear to be looking at an endorsement only with conditions:

Lastewka said Wednesday he has had no discussions with Fannon or other local Greens about the issue.

“Obviously anything that is a benefit to my campaign is not a bad thing, but I have not had discussions with anyone,” he said. “I am running on my record and on my experience.”...

“If Mr. Lastewka comes out in favour of proportional representation and pollution taxes, then I think he would get our endorsement,” Fannon said.

Remember again that even Dion didn't commit to anything approaching what the St. Catharines Greens appear to be demanding. Even if Lastewka wanted to commit to the Greens' terms, he'd still be subject to his own party's policies - which don't appear likely to fit the demand for support of proportional representation.

As a result, the Greens appear entirely likely to end up making a public declaration of their willingness to bow out without actually securing a deal. And that would presumably be nearly as much of a boon for Lastewka as a formal endorsement.

Finally, let's note that the cloud of promise-breaking surrounding the Greens is only getting thicker. It's sad enough that Elizabeth May plans to make Peter MacKay's false promises at the final PC leadership convention into an election issue even after herself breaking a clear leadership promise in cutting her deal with Dion. But now, the Greens are plainly putting themselves in a position to have a deal broken by the other side - much like David Orchard whose outrage the Greens are apparently trying to draw on.

After all, if the Greens decide to bow out based on a Lib promise as to their future policy positions, the Greens will lose any real ability to enforce the deal as soon as candidate registration ends in the riding - to say nothing of how powerless they'd be to dictate Lastewka's actions if he were to be elected. And if the Greens really are naive enough to think the Libs can be trusted unconditionally, then they'll only deserve the complete disillusionment that's coming to them.