A new Party and the balance of power

There was a piece on Broadsheet yesterday about rumours in Leinster House…

I am hearing Ronan Mullen has set up a new ‘religious-based’ party with Lorcan Price, a former secretarial assistant from Leinster house, now a junior counsel.

Mullen and who?
Lorcan Price is a former Leas Cathaoirleach of Ógra Fianna Fail (his leaflet from that election) and is also on the Board of a group called Catholic Comment with Senator Mullen.

Now ‘religious-based’ parties and candidates don’t exactly have a great list of success here, with Dana and Kathy Sinnotts election to the European Parliament and of course Mullens election to the Seanad the only real successes. None of the parties such as the National Party, CSP or Muintir na hEireann made any inroads electorally.
The fact is that they didn’t really need electoral success as most of the power of the Catholic Right was as a lobby group.It was they that initially foisted the series of Abortion Referenda on us, they that led campaigns against Divorce. It was they that got Phil Hogan signing assurances over not introducing abortion. They that could picket a TDs office or distribute leaflets or make phone calls calling them ‘abortionists’ and the like.

If, as looks the case (and note the campaign from various pro life groups against Fine Gael), the government do legislate in some form for the X Case and the A, B and C cases, then where can this pro life lobby turn?
No major party is going to pledge to have another Abortion Referendum to try and get to the position the pro lifers feel we should be. It would more than likely lose them votes.

So back to this new party… Well we do have a fairly volatile electorate at the moment and if some well known Galway based right winger were to join …. it could take the focus away from the purely religious aspect. You could have a mix of scrapping Croke Park, Burning the bondholders and demands for another Abortion Referendum (oh and Justice for Sean Quinn too 🙂 ). They might even win some seats.

Now what could say six Dail seats make? …The balance of power!

So I wonder is this a change of tack from those on the Catholic Right. With no party left to lobby , instead create a party of the Catholic Right with the aim of having the balance of power and through that asking for legislation on Abortion to be rolled back or indeed another Referendum.