What IS the NDP's candidate screening process?

With another NDP candidate being ridiculed by media this week, we were going to write a blog entry about the very poor choices the NDP is making in selecting candidates that it thinks should run our economy in troubled times. We were going to make pithy comments and ridicule them, but why should we, when the media and Carole James herself are already doing it for us?

James is quoted in a CBC story yesterday saying the controversy of disgraced candidate Ray Lam’s racy Facebook photos forcing his resignation as a candidate in Vancouver False Creek reflects “the reality of the new media.” She goes on to add:

“It will be interesting to watch politics over the next 10 to 15 years when you have an entire generation of young people who grew up with their lives public on Facebook.”

Boy, can’t wait to see what kinds of photos other NDP candidates will show us! Imagine, going into politics and having their whole lives made public. These are the kind of people who would have their hands on the levers of power in a $35 billion operation. Really confidence-inspiring, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, saving us from having to come up with commentary about this whole thing is The Province’s respected columnist, Michael Smyth. His story yesterday, headlined “Big holes in NDP's candidate-screening process; Latest in party's parade of wingnuts for elected office,” added up Lam’s Facebook faux pas with Mable Elmore’s anti-Zionist comments, and throws in some federal NDP candidates predicaments to conclude that the NDP don’t know how to screen candidates.

“The NDP promised to do better. Instead, it seems "why stop there" has become the theme song of the NDP's wingnuts-for-office parade…”A lack of judgment," NDP Leader Carole James explained yesterday, Gee, do ya think?”

But the best line Smyth’s newspaper article – and really, we couldn’t have made up this stuff better ourselves:

“But it's worse than that for the NDP: This kind of pattern can plant serious doubts in the minds of people wondering if the party and its candidates are fit to run the province.”

Do we even need to say it? Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.

A nice wednesday bit of NDP inconsistency

The NDP’s energy critic, John Horgan was on CKNW last Friday trying to dig his way out of a hole. Guest host Michael Smyth asked why the NDP(click the link to listen), who have come out strongly opposed to independent power production (IPP), support an IPP in Lytton.

Horgan touts the old party line that the NDP would put a moratorium on IPPs (despite environmentalists like Tzeporah Berman being in favour of them). But maybe not the ones already approved. Huh?

Smyth calls him out, saying “But, look, I thought you said the other day that you like this Lytton project because they need the power there, they’ve been having brownouts there and that it’s a good project in that respect. Now you’re telling me you wouldn’t approve it.”

And Horgan has the audacity to claim he’s being consistent.

Horgan: I'm not changing my position, Mike, but this is a much larger debate than a small micro-hydro project that will service a community that's underserviced today…the fact that the First Nations in Lytton have a power purchase agreement from B.C. Hydro, a contract to provide electricity to the community, means that that debate is over. The debate that we should be having….

Smyth: Yeah, but if you guys were in power, you wouldn't approve it.

Horgan: I'm not in power, Mike. You might have noticed that.

Thank heavens for that!

Perhaps our favourite line, though, goes to Smyth: “I think you’re making up your policy on the fly here.”

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, Wrong leader, Wrong time.