Revolutionary Moderation

Mighty merger mania!



Since I posted the first couple of times on the merger deal struck by Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay, I certainly have heard a surprising variety of perspectives.



As James Bow correctly points out in my comments section to this post, the Tories need to get pretty wide approval from their membership to go through with this. And some of those voters, if they aren't listening to David Orchard, might be listening to Joe Clark.



Gilles Duceppe noted this morning that while a merger might mean no more vote-splitting among conservative-minded people in Ontario, a strong Tory party will create splits among federalists in Quebec, and help his party along.



Update: Keith Brownsey from Mount Royal College told Newsworld there's lots of Tory membership-buying by Reform Alliance members, who will overwhelm the Clark/Orchard Tories. But in the end, he believes, the new "Conservative" party will look philosophically a whole lot like the current Reform Alliance Party, and the red Tories in this country will be searching for a new political home.



Jack Layton claims that one less party means more media time for the NDP. We'll see.