Be Nice to Conservatives
Crossposted at http://ReportonGreens.blogspot.com
The timing of this post couldn't be any better so, in the spirit of being a team player, I offer up this tidbit of advice for the Green Party, it’s candidates and the Campaign Committee. Tone down the anti-Conservative Party rhetoric.
It’s not that I am promoting going out and campaigning FOR the Conservatives. I fully understand why many Green Party members (and candidates) are so opposed to the Conservative Party, their actions in government and their potential “hidden agenda”. As an engineer, I’m not overly happy about the fact that the Minister overseeing the Science portfolio is a Creationist. It’s just that when we polarize the Conservatives, and thus their supporters (soft and die-hard), we make it extremely difficult to win votes FROM the Conservatives.
We are going to have 144 Green Party candidates, including Leader Elizabeth May, contesting to become the Member of Parliament where a Conservative incumbent currently resides. In many of these ridings, sweeping the votes of the Liberals, NDP and everyone else still won’t be enough to win the riding. Hell, in most of Alberta, you’d still be behind by a 2-to-1 margin. The campaign plan cannot be to polarize soft Conservative voters to stay with the Conservative Party.
Every effort needs to be taken to convince soft Conservative voters that the Conservative party isn’t that small-c Conservative and/or has abandoned their Reform grassroots. The recent 101 billion dollar deficit over five years or the additional Senators appointed by Harper are prime examples of this. The deficit isn’t very fiscally conservative and a Reformer wants an elected Senate. If they see the Green Party as a natural alternative (which requires highlighting those parts of our platform), then the more likely we are going to earn those votes.
Now, at this point, I’m sure that there are a few Greens getting a little annoyed with me because I am asking them to tone down the attack on the Conservative’s record on the environment (yes, I'm aware that I annoy certain Greens on almost a daily basis). However, consider this… taking a vote away from the Conservatives and getting them to vote Green is worth two votes to our cause. You only need to convince 10% of the electorate who vote Conservative to switch in order to close a 20% gap.
Even if you are a Green who’d prefer to see a Liberal MP over a Conservative MP, knocking the Conservatives down 10 points could be the difference in getting that change. For the record (again), I would rather just see a Green MP including Elizabeth May in Saanich-Gulf Islands (if/when she wins the nomination).
End result is this… if you want a Green MP, be nice to the Conservative voters. If you want a change in government, be nice to the Conservative voters.
- Mark Taylor's blog
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That should be "Be nice to
That should be "Be nice to 'c'onservatives."
Small c, as in the average voter. Capital C, is not for we.
Yes but don't hate them either
Dan, I'll go along with that. But we shouldn't be purposely nasty to big C Conservatives either in the same way we shouldn't be (personally) nasty to anyone. Besides, small c's might get defensive if we are unnecessarily nasty to the big ones.
In The Godfather Michael Corleone says “you should never hate your enemies, it affects your judgment”. I think it applies to politics.
Ard Van Leeuwen (Dufferin-Caledon, ON)
The views I express on this blog are purely my own and should not be construed to represent the official position of the Green Party of Canada.
Be nice to small-c and Big-C conservatives
My inlaws were card-carrying Big-C Conservatives and, after 3 long years, I finally convinced them to become Big-G Greens but they are always going to be small-c conservatives. It was me repeatedly demonstrating that the Big-C's weren't little-c's that won them over. A pattern we all can repeat nationwide (hopefully with similar results on a shorter time frame!!!)
I agree with Ard that being nice to all the Big-C's including the MPs and candidates is beneficial to us in the long run. Not only do we actually demonstrate that we "do politics differently" but we may, as an added bonus, get the small-c's to stop donating to the big-C party.
Mark Taylor (Cypress Hills - Grasslands)
http://ReportonGreens.blogspot.com
This statement is purely my own opinion and no way is to be mistaken for the viewpoints of the party
Why not just be nice to
Why not just be nice to everyone?
There are quite a few people here that are openly hostile to social conservatives but don't want to admit it. Admitting it would mean we would have to deal with the problem that there are two contigents in this party (actually throughout the entire Green movement). One contigent is happy with the idea a free (but regulated) economy, while another contigent wants to redact the last 75 years of economic progress. Well, that's probably a biased perspective, but there's no denying it exists. Maybe a fairer way to describe it is social conservatives are for fair and dignifying opportunities for all, but pure socialsts are just for division of wealth. I suggest that getting too much c-consersative support is disconcerting to the latter folk.
Why do I even care? Polling numbers continually show we have hit saturation. There are a lot of pie-in-the-sky claims that we will magically grow to 20% in no time at all. Where is this support coming from? There is a lot of talk about how the youth vote is going to prop us up in the future. This willfully ignores the reality that youth have always been disproportionately left-leaning only to move rightward to a centrist position as they get older.
As of current polling, the GPC and the NDP added together only reaches about 25% support, and there are plenty of Greens who are social conservatives, so the actual left-leaning vote is less. The future of our party is going to be social conservatives and economic centrists. We need to welcome these people.
Telling C-conservatives that they are unwelcome in our party actually violates the spirit of the Green movement: that everyone has an equal right to offer input.
Fiscal conservative vs Social democratic contingent
Bram, I think you meant to say the Fiscal Conservative / Social Democratic contingent. I believe this party is socially progressive and thus is not seeking to attract social conservatives. That said, I'm very interested in whether the GPC leans more toward the fiscal conservative end of the spectrum. In my view, traditional fiscal conservative policies (i.e. neoliberal policies) are unsustainable environmentally and unjust, creating gross inequality in wealth and power between people and nations. Those policies certainly don't achieve fairness and equal opportunity. If you are right Bram that that is the future of the GPC then this party is doing a disservice to the environmental and global justice movements.
Yes, I really mean
Yes, I really mean social-Conservatives, ie. socially progressive fiscal conservatives -- not moral fascists. I wasn't inclined to think there would be confusion, given the current context.
I'd use the term conservative liberalism, but that would probably confuse too many people, and it's not entirely accurate.
Anyway, I am referring to the contingent of fiscal conservatives who could vote GPC but currently vote CPC. These are people who might dislike the CPCs ambivalence toward concentrated wealth. Or maybe people unhappy with their universally socially regressive focus.
Although to make a point, I don't know why we would turn anyone away. People believe what they believe, their opinions are just as valid as anyone's.
The other thing to remember
The other thing to remember is if you need to be critical, you can be critical of "government".