Red Tories And Liberals - Reunited At Last

Just two weeks ago, Tracy Parsons was a leader of the Progressive Canadian party. Now she is a Liberal. And so is Jim Love who used to be the party president. And the other four members of the executive, along with several members of the national council, all of the Quebec organizers and many riding presidents. All of them have abandoned the Progressive Canadian party to join the Liberals.

But what was this Progressive Canadian party anyway? The party founders presented it as a continuation of the old Progressive Conservative party. They expropriated the old PC logo, remodeled their website to resemble the one of the old PC party and run a dozen or two of candidates in the past two general elections under the "PC Party" affiliation. That was enough to siphon a few thousands votes away from the Conservatives but not enough even to influence the outcome of a narrow race, let alone winning a single seat for themselves.

Neither did the party accomplish its goal of becoming the new home for the anti-merger PCs. John Herron, the only PC incumbent in the 2004 election, run as a Liberal. Joe Clark and André Bachand too, threw their support behind "Team Martin". A handful of the Red Tory Senators (including the two, appointed by Paul Martin in 2005) chose to maintain a rump caucus of a non-existing party, rather than forming a Progressive Canadian caucus in the Senate. Even Garth Turner, who blamed Harper for "taking his party away from him" was more interested in becoming a "first Green MP" (and joining the Liberals couple months later), than resurrecting the PC caucus in the House of Commons...

Ever wondered how many Red Tories, would be PC (or Conservative) leaders ended up joining the Liberals? Let's count them together: Scott Brison, David Orchard, Belinda Stronach, Garth Turner... Did I forget anyone? Tracy Parsons too, wanted to lead a political party for the Red Tories. After a couple years of trying she realized that such party already exists. It's called the Liberal party.

"As a political party you are always trying to find your differentiators [with other parties] and I found that when Stéphane Dion became the leader of the Liberal Party that that differentiator was harder and harder to locate," explained Ms. Parsons, who lives in Truro, N.S., and had been party leader since 2005.

(Source)

That's what me and other Social Conservatives have been saying for years now. So if a SoCon like me is not trustworthy enough for you - I guess you can still trust yet another (fifth?) Red Tory leader who has decided that there isn't really much of a difference between the Liberals and Red Tories, so the Red Tories might as well become just plain Red.