Tea Party North Is "Fair" Game

It is pretty amusing to hear some pundits SCOFF at this whole Tea Party North designation, as though mere manufactured labelling. Of course political opponents have picked up on the theme, but really only to highlight extremist tendencies which have PRACTICAL foundations. Let's just forget what partisan rivals are saying, confine ourselves to the infighting WITHIN the formerly progressive Conservatives and you see that Tea Party North is a self creation, based on events, borne of a philosophy entirely consistent with certain labels.

Last time I checked the former PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE PREMIER of Ontario isn't a Liberal operative, so when he volunteers "Tea Party elements" as part of HIS own party, it carries certain weight, that deserves consideration. Perhaps more fascinating, we have a PC candidate, at the center of this radicalized debate, which embraces the comparison to the Tea Party, last NOVEMBER, well before partisans tried to unfairly paint the PC party, well before Eves provided critical mass to the discussion:

Remarks made by former Ontario PC premier Ernie Eves at an appreciation dinner for MPP Norm Sterling have shown a growing division within the Tory party.

Eves criticized his own party for failing to defend Sterling, a 34-year Queen’s Park veteran, who was ousted during the riding’s nomination process on March 31.

MacLaren, a far-right wing politician associated with the Ontario Landowners Association, won the bitter nomination battle.

“I don’t care who hears this,” said Eves. “The treatment that Norm got from his own party was not very polite, was not fair, it was not loyal, it was not compassionate, it was not even and it was not honest,” Eves said during a dinner for Sterling at the Canadian Golf and Country Club in Stittsville on Aug. 25.

Eves later clarified his comments on a Toronto talk radio show, saying that “Tea Party” elements within the Conservatives were behind the poor treatment of Sterling.

In an interview with this newspaper last November, MacLaren said it was “fair” to compare the local Tories’ move to supplant the riding’s old guard with the Tea Party’s attempt to move the U.S. Republican party further to the right and the Wild Rose party’s attempt to pull Alberta politics in the same direction.

“All across the western world countries are willing stand up a little more. I am willing to fight for my culture and heritage and what my forefathers fought for,” MacLaren said at the time.

Never mind the bizarre references to culture and heritage- which are troubling in and of themselves- here we have a candidate saying it's "fair" to make the comparison last year. The radicals that are yielding greater and greater influence within the PC ranks seem comfortable with the Tea Party comparisons, so the likes of John Ivison might want to incorporate that self realization into their own biased view of the world. It is FAIR game to discuss the far right elements in the PC party, just as detractors like to speak of the "radical left" when disproportionately disparaging other entities. True is, by all accounts, there does appear a very REAL internal struggle within the PC party that provides a very fluid comparison to other manifestations down south.

Voters need to understand what is occurring beyond the superficial optics the PC party is trying to sell. Voters need to know, that should this group take power, there is a hard right element which will yield influence when it comes to decision making. Voters need to process the facts on the ground, and if they're comfortable with the emerging radicalization of the PC party, then that will be expressed at the ballot booth. What is pure bullshit however, is trying to belittle this Tea Party debate, particularly when the genesis of the debate comes from the PC party itself. This is a REAL issue, the views of certain MPP's and candidates well known, their presence deserves to be incorporated into the discussion of which direction you want to see the province of Ontario move.