Jason Kenney and the Con Apocalypse

As you must have realized by now, there is nothing but nothing that scares the Cons more than electoral reform.

Because they know it would be the death of their Zombie Party.

And now that the Liberals have kicked off the process, they're absolutely desperate.

So desperate in fact they've even recruited Andrew Coyne.



Who must be so proud.

Or so relieved....



But the Con who seems to be the most desperate, or the most stirred up, is the ghastly Jason Kenney...



Who knows all too well, that scrapping the first-past-the-post system, would mean the end of the line for him as well.

So he has come charging out, and put out a video calling on the Liberals to hold a referendum.

From which I took this excerpt from the ghastly Rebel...



And while Kenney seems in such a righteous frenzy, you'd almost expect him to start doing a snake dance.

Like the old PMO gang used to do before their morning meeting... 



And has the nerve to proclaim the virtues of democracy, which that foul Com gang violated over and over again for almost ten nightmare years.

Kenney fails to mention the real reason him and his Cons want a referendum. Not to approve electoral reform but to KILL it.

As Tom Clark decodes here.

Finally the Conservatives. Their code is the easiest to break. They look at any and all reform options with horror. Proportional representation would only encourage divisions in what is, afterall, a party of political alliances. The social conservatives might strike out on their own to win some seats where they wouldn’t have to feel bound to a party of convenience. Red Tories might feel the same. 

As for ranked ballots, there lies oblivion, or at least a permanent banishment to the fringes. To compete in that forum would mean having to become a party of the centre, which sort of isn’t their thing. 

So here’s the code. They need to kill any change, so they are trying to make this debate all about the need to hold a referendum. Why? Because when electoral reform was put to referendums before in B.C., Ontario and P.E.I., it failed, in some cases miserably. If past is prologue, a national referendum may produce the same result and be just the thing to make all these ideas go away.

And what Kenney also fails to mention is that there would almost certainly not be enough time to organize a proper referendum campaign.

Elections Canada needs about two years to prepare for the next election if the system changes, meaning the decision needs to be made by early fall 2017. The deadline to report for the committee established Wednesday is Dec. 1, leaving a very small window for the House of Commons and Senate (which itself could be unpredictable in its newly independent ways) to consider and pass any legislation, let alone organize a referendum.

Or if one was held, not enough time to win it.

And if the Liberals wanted to win such a referendum, they would need the campaign to be long enough to give them the time to sell the new electoral system to Canadians who, in the past, have been reluctant to vote for change.

Which would make it even more likely that voters would opt for the status quo, and that the next election would also be held under the old rules.

And if the Liberals became less popular, and NDP was also to rise from the dead, the Cons could hope to split the vote again, and even win themselves another majority.

And bury electoral reform for a generation....



Which to me means simply this:

While we throw ourselves into the process to determine what system is best, we also need to fight the idea of a referendum as hard as we can.

Remind the Cons that they lost the election.

And use the power we now enjoy to bury THEM forever...



First we stop them, like we stopped Harper.

And then we destroy them...

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