Another explanatory piece on what the Conservative Party national executive are up to.

This June the executive at the national level decided that each of the 308 ridings in Canada would have a nominee read to rumble when there is an election call.
The new rule isn’t pleasing anyone. The national executive released a statement this week explaining their reasoning, the Prime Minister’s office has had to release a statement.

Conservative party officials are finding they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t provide some sort of shelter to incumbent MPs from challenges to their nominations.

Both sitting Members of Parliament and the people that want to fight them for the right to run in the next election say they’re getting a raw deal under party rules.

Unlike the last election, incumbents aren’t automatically acclaimed as the Conservative candidate in their ridings. The Liberals are protecting their incumbents this election, while the NDP and Bloc Quebecois insist on open processes.

For Class of 2006 Tory MPs such as B.C.’s Colin Mayes and Alberta’s Mike Lake, it seems unduly arduous to go through a nomination battle just seven months after they won their seats. In both cases, they’re fighting challengers they beat the last time.

Mayes said he’s gone “flat out” since last November, getting nominated, fighting an election, getting oriented on Parliament Hill and then representing his riding.

“It’s actually a job application, and the membership look at your resume,” said Mayes, also a parliamentary committee chairman.

“I won that once already, and not too long ago, and things haven’t changed. I just kind of question why we’re going through this again.”

Said Lake: “I think the process needs to be looked at for sure… .”

“Part of the reason it’s challenging is that I’m trying to do both: I’m not giving up my constituency work to deal with my nomination. When most people go home at the end of the evening, I go to my second job which is working on the nomination. Last night I went to bed at 2:30 a.m.”

Party governors responded to caucus complaints by announcing this month that nomination meetings in ridings with Conservative MPs would be held as soon as possible and before Parliament re-opens on September 18th.

This is a very inconvenient rule, not only for incumbents but for party members. Most of the seats won’t be challenged, but the Conservatives could wind up losing some good incumbents who will have to make decisions about whether to run independently. The fractures in the party between the big C little c don’t look like they are about to heal anytime soon.

That is publicly playing out in the battle in Halton between the incumbent, and Canada’s version of the Religious Right (all the hard work aside) is hilarious. You have two very quick verbal people (Turner and McVety) spitting it out at every opportunity in any venue provided them. It’s far more entertaining than the current Liberal leadership race. You also have two people who know how to appeal to their grass roots and will take every inch of column, every second of air time and every kilobyte of bandwidth online.
It is political theatre we’re not used to in the dog days of August. One has honed his skills at his preacher fathers knee and with his religious right buddies in the US. The other taught English, worked for a living, wrote for media, lost his seat, learned his lesson and went back into politics older and wiser. One of the cardinal rule of politics is - only get mad on purpose. And the incumbent is wise to remember that.

While there is a moral to this drama, I admit since the King James bible hit the fan in Halton I haven’t laughed this much about politics in years.  Blogging Tories - Nomination Watch