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Politics 101 Attack the Hippies?
Read more about: Coalition, Fianna Fail, Green Party, Progressive Democrats
Environment Minister Dick Roche has come out with an attack on the Green Party saying “Over the past decade the Irish economy has been transformed. Real and substantial gains have been made. Yet at every stage of this remarkable transformation, the Green party has been there shouting ’Stop’,” This is quiet interesting as one would have thought that Fianna Fail might be needing the Green Parties support.
While the people who vote for Fianna Fail may not be likely to vote for the Green Party. In fact it might be prudent to leave the door open. But that is politics for you name calling and I am guessing this is more to get anti-hippy voters as much as anything. Even though you might think that the Green’s and PD’s are diametrically opposed to one another some of there policies all though coming from different perspectives Greens environmental PD’s economic are not that different. For instance on renewable energy. So the belief that the Greens are locked into Fine Gael-Labour may not be true. Indeed the Greens are not entirely happy with Fine Gael – Labour and even though Trevor Sargent is reported as saying he would not go into power with Fianna Fail that could just be political posturing or may not be the entire parliamentary parties position. Indeed the Minister maybe wrong when he says “Yet the Greens aspire to go into government and they are a vital prop to the ambitions of Fine Gael and Labour.”
The Green Party conference is this weekend.
simon,
I stood as a Green candidate in 2004 in Wicklow. I worked out that 1 in 5 voters gave me a useful positioning on the ballot paper, and I had about 8 or 9% of all transfers from both FF and FG candidates, marginally more from FF voters in fact.
Fair play Frank.
I do wonder how big is the “anti-hippy” vote is. I am sure there is such a vote. However I think all parties are beginning to see that the “pro-hippy” vote is possibly bigger. The greens might be an interesting party in the next election. Who knows there might be a big shock with the Greens PDs and Sinn Fein all taking a big chunk out of the big three’s seats
This is just a tactic to try to scare the farmers who vote for FG into switching to anyone (preferably FF, but anyone will do) else for fear the Greens will get in and end farming forever, etc.