Since several Liberal party supporters who’ve been expressing their dissatisfaction with their party has made the news recently, I thought I’d compare how supporters from each of the three national parties react to these situations.
The Conservative reaction can best be seen in their treatement of Carol Jamieson. Here are a couple of examples. These were the nicer ones too. In short the conservative supporters responded to Carol Jamieson’s dissent exactly like they do to anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep with their ideology; they dragged her through the mud.
Now lets see how the NDP supporters reacted to Paul Summerville’s dissatisfaction with the party and subsequent defection to the Liberals. Well the closest thing I could find to the nastiness dished out by the conservatives toward Carol Jamieson was this post by Le Revue Gauche who scalds Summerville by saying, “Paul Summerville always was an economic and political liberal…” In other words, not so much. In fact, my own reaction was to simply post on Paul’s blog that it was unfortunate he was leaving the NDP.
Now we get to the liberal supporters. Lets see what they’ve been saying about Susan Kadis, the first of the recent dissenters. Well the reaction from liberal supporters toward Susan Kadis pretty much mirrors the reaction from NDP supporters toward Paul Summerville. About the harshest thing I could find was this comment from Far and Wide.
Did Susan Kadis overreact? Possibly,
Ouch. Poor girl. Will she ever recover from such a horrible attack.
Anyway, this is just a little something for dissenters within the ranks of the NDP or Liberal Party to think about. Remember to be thankful that you weren’t a Conservative Party supporter when you got up on your high horse. It’s relatively rare for a progressive to get the swiftboat treatment from other progressives for their dissent. So there’s no excuse for any progressive to act like an asshole when they get in a snit over something they don’t like about their party.