It seems every summer, one political story comes out of nowhere to dominate the headlines. After all, pundits need something to pontificate on, a task that has grown more challenging with the next election four years away.<\/p>\n
Last summer’s break-out hit was the Census<\/a>. No one saw it coming as an issue, but it grabbed headlines week after week. Every Tony Clement tweet generated a dozen stories.<\/p>\n This summer’s star is, without a doubt, Nycole Turmel. A complete unknown a month ago, Turmel has been on the front pages every day for the past two weeks, and the story<\/a> shows no signs of dying.<\/p>\n Amongst today’s developments, the always restrained Pat Martin has compared this to McCarthyism<\/a> and, to a certain extent, he has a point. If you dig through every MP’s history, all parties will have members connected to the sovereignist movement in some capacity – after all, Jean Lapierre was a co-founder of the Bloc and Georges Laraque once shared a hot dog with Gilles Duceppe.<\/p>\n However…if we take Martin’s analogy one step further, can you imagine the uproar if the Democrats tried to nominate a card carrying Communist as their leader<\/em> back in the 50s? Even if said Democrat had only purchased the card to support a friend?<\/p>\n