Back to real life...

Well, apparently there's stuff going on that's not convention related. Soon I should get on to that, but I just wanted to get all my final thoughts on the convention out of the way first, then settle back into my normal routine a bit before heading back to normal blogging.

I will say that the new controversy over whether we should whip our people into voting against the con SSM bill is interesting. As much as I'd love to think everyone should oppose reopening the debate, I'm not sure if we'll manage that. [on a side note, I've been thinking for a while that the best way for Harper himself to play this would be to oppose his own motion. It would be pure political genius for him to show that he's not a crazy maniacal doofus]

So, should we force people to vote our way or kick them out? I think it comes down to politics. Whipping everyone would send a good message that we're a united party and we are the party that will defend everyone's rights. But then again, we have to face the facts that we could lose some numbers on this.

I would say that the best thing to do would be to tell people that if you don't want SSM, too bad, it's already here, and there's no use in bringing it up again. In that case, simply abstain from the vote and be done with it. In an ideal case we should try to get all progressives running in the next election, but I'm not about to throw away a significant percentage of our MPs over this.

Second, Dion being a french citizen. Who cares? If anything this will bring up the much-needed debate as to how much dual citizenry we should allow. This obviously won't affect him in any way in decision making, so if this is the best attack the cons can come up with, I think we picked a great leader last weekend.

Third, I should say congratulation to Stelmach on his win in Alberta. There was a great leadership race: no campaign financing rules, no real membership rules, people being given pre-paid, pre-signed cards to vote with. And did it generate nearly as much interest as the Liberal Leadership convention did? No. Another reason why OMOV failed last week at the constitution plenary.