Christian Conservative Christian "Independent"

I'm an evangelical Christian, member of the CPC, but presently & unjustly exiled to wander the political wilderness.
All opinions expressed here are solely my own.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Why Elizabeth May's leadership is finished

Because she can't win in her selected riding of the Saanich-Gulf Islands. She's chosen to make her last stand here against CPC incumbant Gary Lunn, and there's no possible electoral math where she can win this one, unless the Liberals choose not to run a candidate here... which Iggy has already ruled out, and which may not even allow her to win anyway.

Here's the 2008 numbers from Elections Canada:

Lunn (CPC) - 27991
Penn (LPC) - 25366
Leier (GPC) - 6742
West (NDP) - 3667 (he was the naked dude who had to drop out, but his name was still on the ballot)

Any way you crunch the numbers, she loses. For her to win, she'd have to take 80%+ of the Liberal vote. There's just no way that happens. Even if the Liberals don't run a candidate, there's no way that she wins... some disgruntaled Liberals will swing to the CPC just to deny her a seat, and/or the NDP in protest.

There was only ONE riding in the entire country where she had a legitimate shot... Guelph. With the base built by retired candidate Mike Nagy, and with the bleeding she would have inflicted on both the Liberals and the Tories, along with the MASSIVE support she'd draw from the University of Guelph, she'd have been the one to beat. While it would have been a three way battle in some respects, it would have pretty much been a Green lock.

But you see, there's a REASON she didn't run in Guelph. For her, the price of a victory was just too great. That's the reason she's finished as the Green Party leader... she doesn't have the guts required to turn her protest party into a mainstream force to be reckoned with. For her, she's only willing to go so far, and she's unwilling to make the sacrifices required to get into the House. For her, the price of a Liberal Member of Parliament was too high a price to pay.

Her mantra that the "Number One Priority" of the Green Party is to get a seat in the House rings hollow. Her best shot was in Guelph, but she was unwilling to unseat Liberal MP Frank Valeriote in the process. And she would have unseated him, any way you slice it... she would have automaticly been the leading candidate, followed by either the Liberals or the Tories, with it being a real tossup between the two of them.

With the conventional wisdom being that the Greens bleed at least three Liberal votes to every lost Tory vote, her entrance into the Guelph race would have either sown up a victory for her, or maybe, if every single star aligned correctly, allowed the CPC to eke out a 100-ish vote win... but there are almost no permutations possible would have allowed Valeriote to keep his seat. (FULL DISCLOSURE: Yes, I did help out in Guelph for the by-election and General Election last time around, but this analysis is strictly by the numbers... various Liberal pundits have already agreed with my analysis that Guelph was her only shot)

And that's why she didn't go for it... forget all the rumours that the local Greens didn't want her, they'd have rallied behind her in a heartbeat, knowing a that victory was almost assured. She chose not to do it because she didn't want to take out a Liberal MP. (Who knows... maybe she didn't want to risk her future chances of a Senate seat?)

Any way you slice it, whenever the next election is called, Elizabeth May is finished... I even predict that calls for her head will sound before the last ballots are counted. And she'll have ultimately failed to accomplish her ultimate goal, to make her Party a mainstream force to be reckoned with... all because she's been too cosy with the Liberal Party of Canada for too long.

So then... let the speculation on their next leader begin. Any names come to mind?

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8 Comments:

  • At Wed Sep 09, 01:58:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Sean Calder said…

    Big Bird?

     
  • At Wed Sep 09, 02:17:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I hear that Homer Simpson needs a new Job now that the Chalk River power plant is shut down...

     
  • At Wed Sep 09, 02:46:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Christian Conservative said…

    Amm, Anonymous, relevance?

    Thanks Troll...

     
  • At Wed Sep 09, 06:22:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous GAry said…

    Do you suppose that the country will be afflicted with she presence again in the leader's debate. She added nothing last time except to restate Liberals talking points, she lost the election and the party has never elected anyone. I hope she is ignored when they set up the leader's debate the next time around.She and the Green Party are irrelevant.

     
  • At Wed Sep 09, 09:04:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Blame Crash said…

    I'm guessing that being an MP is her second choice. First Prize for her would be a Senate seat. That rude woman can then squawk, insult and hector without pause or reflection and not have to worry about her job.

    This whole exercise of running for political office is to create a sellable narrative and legitimacy that she and her media enablers can peddle to Canadians if she gets appointed to the Senate by her Liberal confederates. It’ll be flogged something like this “she has won votes from Canadians, coast to coast and points in between, and now she will represent those views in Ottawa.”

     
  • At Wed Sep 09, 09:38:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    So if she loses AGAIN, will the fat lady sing?

     
  • At Thu Sep 10, 01:32:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Christian Conservative said…

    Hey Sean, no swear-ies. ;-) Comment rejected, try again!

     
  • At Sat Sep 19, 07:07:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger The_Iceman said…

    I am a U of G alumni. Conservatives are the minority there, and a lot of right leaning people liked Brenda Chamberlain who held it for a really long time. The economics faculty were mostly of the Libertarian mold, though some of them really pumped the Keynesian model.

    I couldn't figure out with any reliable certainty which political party my economics professors likely voted for. The arts on the other hand, swing a lot farther to left. I had a history essay about what was wrong with Myanmar; that corporations and countries buying their resources was funding the military junta. The over-zealous TA knocked 20% off of my grade because I didn't refer to the country Burma. I know it was 20% because that is what the prof added to my grade when I asked him to read my essay.

    They have the Aggie school which is a big chunk of the student population, the Aggies being rural farmers who listen to country music and certainly seem sympathetic to the Tories.

     

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