Mind you, Crosbie apparently specializes in class-action lawsuits, so it’s difficult to imagine how he would approach a case with only one complainant. Perhaps he could take out an ad urging himself to come forward and sue.
The Conservative Party of Canada rejected Crosbie’s candidacy in the federal riding of Avalon because he “wasn’t the type of candidate they wanted,” he stated this week in a news release.
That is such a broad rejection, it is impossible to know what it means.
Related:
Fight over blackballed Avalon Conservative nomination gets uglier
Maybe the CPC wants candidates who will go on national radio themselves to discuss their own political issues and aspirations, rather than allow daddy to do it for them.
Naturally, any good journalist, upon hearing of Ches’s candidacy conundrum, would instantly think, “I wonder what John Crosbie has to say about all this?”
Which is exactly why you heard still-nationally-famous Crosbie Senior on the radio talking about Crosbie Junior’s Tory travails.
But really. If Ches is old enough to throw tantrums in courtrooms, he should be mature enough to say, “No Daddy, this is something I have to deal with myself.”
Perhaps the CPC’s “type of candidate” explanation has to do with the Crosbie name. After all, anyone who walks into the House of Commons with that uncommon surname surely has considerable gravitas. But as Conservatives both federal and provincial have shown, they highly favour lightweights (see: Steve Kent).
Maybe the CPC’s “type of candidate” excuse hides — or rather, reveals — the Tories’ fear of having MPs who are accustomed to taking a position and intelligently arguing in favour of it, and thus are likely to speak against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s controlling, paternalistic leadership style.
Maybe “type of candidate” really means his name isn’t Fabian Manning.
Or, possibly, someone found out Ches Crosbie once applied for a job with a diametrically opposing party. No wait. That was Thomas Mulcair.
If nothing else, Ches Crosbie’s rejection by the Tory apparatchiks is a cautionary tale about what has gone so wrong in Canadian politics.
One of the primary curses of modern democracy is that parties have too much power, and too many inappropriate powers.
In some instances, parties have such powers because of the rules, but in other cases it is merely due to the citizenry voluntarily handing it over.
An example of the latter is the near impossibility of getting elected as an independent. No party affiliation inevitably means a candidate finishes last.
In an ideal and just polity, a guy such as Crosbie might declare, “OK, if that’s they way you’re going to play it, I’m going on the ballot as an independent” — and then succeed in laying an old-fashioned stomping on the Tory brass’s favoured candidate, and maybe even win and book a plane ticket to Ottawa alongside Ryan Cleary, a mouthy firebrand who has not yet been rejected by his own party.
But in the world of realpolitik, in which the people’s primary trait increasingly gravitates toward obedience, such an electoral upset is just short of impossible. A donkey has a better chance of winning the Triple Crown than an independent candidate has of getting elected in Canada. This, among others, is a significant symptom of the sickness of the current system.
Many people are touting a change to a proportional representation electoral system.
But here’s something to keep in mind regarding the Ches Crosbie affair: under a proportional electoral system, party apparatchiks would have even more power — not less — in selecting and rejecting candidates. Even worse, the election of independent candidates would go from nearly impossible to virtually impossible.
Brian Jones is a copy editor at The Telegram. He can be reached at bjones@thetelegram.com.
