Tories made Khan's opponent a judge

Originally posted at Cherniak on Politics

When Wajid Khan crossed the floor, Stephen Taylor, head of the Blogging Tories, posted the following:

Khan should have to face nomination in his own riding with the local Conservative EDA before he should attain the label of "incumbent" in the next election. Khan switching to the Conservatives nets no discernible gain for Khan (from backbench MP to backbench MP) and it should net no discernible gain for him in the future (such as having his nomination grandfathered, as the Liberals do). Before Belinda Stronach faced the voters in Newmarket-Aurora, were the Liberal members of that riding given the opportunity to challenge her nomination before the next election? Let's hope that Khan will have to stand for nomination for the party before he faces the voters.

At the time, I thought he was just trying to give Blogging Tories something to talk about beyond complaining about another Harper broken promise on democratic reform. However, I have since realized that Taylor's concern is even more of a rope-a-dope than expected.

As you can read here and here, the Conservative who ran against Wajid Khan during the last election, Raminder Gill, was appointed as a Citizenship Judge on October 31, 2006. As a result, Taylor's big concern about Khan running for the nomination is all but meaningless. The one person who could have beaten Khan has been shuffled off in a patronage appointment.

I don't mean to question Mr. Gill's qualifications. He seems like he should be a fine citizenship judge. My only point is that the Tories and Mr. Khan have clearly been planning this move for longer than a week. Say what you want about Stronach, but at least she was honest about the timeline.

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As a side note, I must say "mea culpa". The other day, I openly considered the possibility of picketing Khan's personal business. My thinking was that he has probably increased his business by being a Liberal MP and that he should now see the negative of abandoning his supporters. I was wrong. This is not the sort of thing that Liberals should do. Whatever one might think about Khan, political repercussions should remain in the political world. If you want to picket, please stick to his constituency office. I should not have suggested otherwise.