The Nomination Saga Continues...

So the supposedly "open" Conservative party is now being sued by it's own members. It would appear that the party apparatniks are going out of their way to protect the wing-nuttier members of their caucus. So far the Tory "central committee" has stopped challenges to Rob Anders and now Myron Thompson.

Of course, the party requires non-disclosure agreements of anyone vying for a nomination so those that are denied can't tell what little the party is telling them to the press. The fact the party is protecting the wing-nuts is clear, since the people that the party is turning down are people that hold or have held high positions in the party that would likely make better candidates than the current MP's. It would seem that the Tories are trying to prevent moderates from "infiltrating" the caucus. If too many centre-right Tories get into caucus, Harper won't be able to push through a hard-right Bushian agenda.

It's that or Harper's support amongst moderate Tories is soft and he needs the support of the radicals to stay in power. Either way the party that has been selling itself to Canadians as new and open is doing everything it can to prove it isn't. It's truly amazing to watch. In Alberta it took 25 years for the Tories to become so arrogant that they started to ignore their own members. Federally it's only taken a few months. I suspect that the more of this that goes on, the more moderates will at the least say away from the polls in Alberta or, worse for the Tories, in the rest of Canada vote for someone else.