From Pop-Tarts to politicians, a variety of flavours is a good thing.
Con fess ion: I don’t particularly like making decisions. It’s why I order my subs with all the fixings, and I don’t really care what’s on my hamburger, so long as it includes cheese, bacon and ketchup. My recent experience of buying a chesterfield was particularly aggravating. Not only are there many different models that come in a range of shapes, styles and sections, but once we finally picked the one we liked, we were forced to weed through a book of hundreds of different fabric swatches. It was awful.
But it’ s still nice to have choices in life. How bad would it be to live in a world where Pop-Tarts were only available in watermelon flavour, instead of offering the choice of dozens of varieties, as is the case? ( Except in Australia, which apparently only has two flavours of Pop-Tarts. You call that living?)
Indeed, in many parts of our lives, we have way more choices today than people did even 50 years ago. Except when it comes to choosing the people who run our country. In many elections, we are forced to pick between two sub- optimal choices. Anyone needing further proof of this wisdom only needs to look south of the border, where the 2016 presidential election could easily become a contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Which makes one wonder why the trend in Canadian politics has generally been to consolidate the number of parties, so voters continue to have only two or three viable options. The latest merger buzz is coming out of Alberta, where the Wildrose and Progres- sive Conservative parties have resurrected the “unite- the- right” mantra from the dustbin of Canadian political terminology.
As my colleague Jen Gerson convincingly argued in t hese pages recently, both parties still hold an i ncredible amount of animosity toward one another — largely stemming from the 2014 incident in which then- premier Jim Prentice convinced nine Wildrose members, i ncluding i ts leader, Danielle Smith, to cross the floor. This makes it unlikely that the two parties will be able to kiss and make up any time soon. And indeed, both Wildrose Leader Brian Jean and PC Leader Ric McIver have traded barbs in recent weeks, and Jean was quick to lash out at former Reform leader Preston Manning when he called for the two parties to merge.
But fears over the New Demo- cratic Party becoming a political dynasty that will rule the province for the next 20 years ( as has consistently happened throughout Alberta history) may just be enough for the two right- of- centre parties to put their differences aside.
The recent news that former Tory cabinet minister Rick Orman held an informal meeting of PC and Wildrose officials and plans to hold a public meeting on uniting the two parties next month shows that there is interest from political elites, if not the grassroots of the parties, as well.
From the point of view of political parties competing in a first-past-the- post electoral system, merging with another party with similar views can make a lot of sense, especially if voters on the other side of the political spectrum are less fractured. This is why the federal unite- the- right movement made a lot of sense: it allowed prime minister Stephen Harper and the Tories to defeat the Liberals, who had maintained a stranglehold on power at the federal level for 13 long years. But the political situation in modernday Alberta i s much different than it was in Ottawa in 2003.
Indeed, there is no reason to believe that either of the two parties cannot defeat the NDP in the next election. If recent polls are any indication, many Albertans are already having second thoughts: a poll conducted by Mission Research Feb. 5- 7 has the Wildrose in the lead at 31 per cent, followed by the NDP at 25 per cent; and an Angus Reid poll shows Premier Rachel Notley’s support has slid from 53 per cent in June, to 33 per cent in February.
And it’s not as if the NDP has no competition on the l eft. If progressive voters get disenfranchised with the New Democrats, they could cast a ballot for the Liberals or the Alberta Party, which could be enough to let one of the two conservative parties slip up the middle.
Until it becomes clear that the NDP’s victory is more than just a historical anomaly, there’s little reason for these two parties to join forces. It’s understandable that the PCs would want to hang their hats on the Wildrose banner, since it is looking more and more like the future of conservatism in Alberta, but Wildrosers may want to think twice about sharing a bed with t he same people who ran the province for two generations and annoyed voters so much that they ended up putting a ragtag group of socialists in office.
As f or voters, t hey should push for more competition in the marketplace of public policy ideas, because picking a political party should be more like shopping for a sofa: we should be able to choose the grey couch, or blue one. Forcing us to buy a brightgreen eyesore would j ust be wrong.
IN ALMOST EVERY FIELD, A WIDE VARIETY OF CHOICES IS HELD UP AS A GOOD THING. WHY NOT OUR ELECTORAL OPTIONS?
WILDROSERS MAY WANT TO THINK TWICE ABOUT SHARING A BED WITH THE SAME PEOPLE WHO RAN THE PROVINCE FOR TWO GENERATIONS. — JESSE KLINE