Quote:
Originally posted by Bend it like Bourgeois@May 4 2005, 07:33 PM
My concern with the fringes is they are not just right and left fringes, but single issue fringes. Like the Bloc magnified. Imagine the Alberta BSE party. The newfoundland fishermans party. The private health care party. The public auto insurance party. Ridiculous examples but there would be some real ones.
Right now we have a few independant candidates holding the balance of power in Parliament, and all kinds of political manuevering is going on. Imagine of those candidates were from the Aboriginal Succession party, or the Anti-Abortion party. What then?
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Do you think a BSE party would get enough province wide support to hold multiple seats? If there's one MP who can get elected on a BSE campaign and all that MP does is lobby for it, all the power to them IMO. It gives those people a voice. I tend to think people will vote for a greater package of values though. For example some pro-weed legatlization voters will vote the marijuana party (whose platform is basically non-existent outside of legalization), but I would think the majority would vote for a party that agrees with their stance on legalization plus actually addresses some other issues.
As for the independants now and the role and power they have, do you not think that's as a result of the domination of the current parties we have and the precarious coalitions that can be created? Do you not think that their role would be far different in a parliament that has 10 parties with no party being close to forming a majority government?
One independant can hold the power when it's a precarious perch between 2, 3 or 4 big parties. They become insignificant in power when coalitions can be more easily shifter under a system that promotes more parties.