no. stop.

if i'm a conservative hindu or muslim from india or africa just off the plane for not that long, and i came here with some money to get a job that was waiting, i'm sort of disenfranchised off the cricket bat.

the conservatives may align more with my values of free markets and traditional values, but they're racist, and i don't really feel welcome at their events, even if the leadership insists i am.

the liberals may seem more welcoming, but i'm not a liberal, and i don't like their policies very much. high taxes, women's rights, restrictions on industry...this stuff is weird and foreign to me. i came here for the free markets.

if the ndp parks themselves in the middle of this and acts as a kind of a "young turks conservative" party that is both legitimately welcoming of newcomers and yet also interested in traditional and conservative value systems, it's going to find itself very appealing to a very large number of people. it may end up on the right in a technical sense, but it's going to take voters from both parties.

it's going to completely lose it's base of white activists, though.

i know that a lot of people are going to recoil at how i'm presenting this, but the data is clear enough, and i actually think this is healthy. the spectrum right now is full of redundancy and disenfranchisement. there's a lot of asians in canada, now, and they don't have the same cultural baggage; they don't fall along the same ideological, party lines. it's perfectly natural for them to organize along their own divisions.

in the long run, you end up with mergers or marginalizations. a centre-right ndp would eventually push the conservatives into the fringes, and help the liberals rediscover themselves. but, in the short run, it would be a healthy and democratic turn of events to enfranchise a set of voters that are maybe even less interested than they ought to be....

then, when their kids swing left, they do it for the right reasons, as they rebel against their conservative parents. and, i'll be here to cheer them on when they do....