Alberta’s Conservative [In Name Only] Party

Baiting the Right 45 Comments

Hanging out in Calgary these days, I’m getting a first hand look at Alberta politics. In this morning’s Calgary Herald was this story by Lorne Gunter. A fellow named Ken Boessenkool has formed the Alberta Blue Committee as a grassroots effort to ensure that some semblance of conservative policies remain in the province. Given that a CINO Party has been running Alberta for many years now, things don’t look too hopeful at this time.
However, there is hope! I trust (and pray) that the voters of Alberta won’t be as stupid as those back in my home province of B.C. and take things to a point where there are only two choices: Centre-Left and Far-Left (aka Tweedledee and Tweedledum), each with absolutely no clue about fiscal responsibility.

45 Replies to “Alberta’s Conservative [In Name Only] Party”

  1. The Alberta Conservatives will actually have some competition next election. It’s even conceivable that they fall out of power.

  2. Yeah,Robert, here in B.C. we have two choices,both unpalatable. The Liberals intend to keep carbon taxing us,and to continue to build windmills,the NDP would carry on with the same AND reward their Public sector Union friends with lovely contracts we can’t afford.
    The Provincial Conservatives keep shooting themselves in the foot,just when things were looking positive for them,they elected a Baptist Minister for Party President.
    So the MSM will portray them as right wing extremists.
    I’d feel sorry for Albertans but we’re worse off politically here. Misery loves company.
    “So break out the bottle
    Bring on the crowd….”

  5. Apparently, the voters of BC are the one ultimately to blame.
    The recent HST vote, and its repeal which was strongly supported by the unions, will cost the BC taxpayer $1.6 billion.
    Congratulations. Better luck next time … once you think thing through.

  6. I used to have some respect for Ted Morton , but the fact of his licking the lefts behind has eliminated that. Hes a CINO’s CINO now.
    Has been for a good while.
    The left long ago infiltrated the Conservatives as they do every important institution.
    Besides its become corrupt & stupid by entitled people who know nothing about regular people anymore. They have lost the ear of Albertans.
    I can only hope to see Wild-rose do to them what They did to the Social Credit Party.
    The so called Conservative party here will vote in Mar who has to be almost as far left as Jack Layton was.
    One good indicator of the dissatisfaction here is the young folks are sick & tired of these phony Conservatives. Almost all I know are voting wild rose . Even the ones at work.
    We know what Morton & his ilk stand for. Poverty with more money with power for themselves. Ore entitlements for their made up class of tax sucking leeches.
    They are part of Alberta’s problems , not any type of solution , unless you want more insanity through legislation.
    Its up to Albertans to choose . Loyalty to a party that doesn’t know the meaning of the word anymore, or a real conservative alternative.
    As for the Liberals or NDP they migrated long ago into the Progressive Conservative party. The husks left are just the true believers in Trudeauopia.

  7. I am extremely dissapointed in Ted Morton.
    Now, I too a conservative party member will switch to the Wild Rose. Yes Mar will be elected leader of the PC party, but his power will be greatly diminished. I expect a minority government to be formed, question is which party will form the government? I sense an even larger rural/urban & Calgary/Edmonton divide on the horizon.

  8. Glad you brought up the Alberta so called Progressive Conservatives. Was waiting for it for some time.
    Here is the deal.
    There is this woman lawyer, Allison Redford, this person is in no way, no how, whatsoever conservative. The socialists would be proud to have her as a leader, she would get a bonus pay, she would be hallowed about on CBC and other socialist media.
    Every day she comes with new ways to spend more and more money. Demagogue does not come close to what this person is.
    There is this man from a conservative background, Doug Horner comes from a family with a long tradition of provincial and federal representation.
    Once though, there was another Horner during the Trudeau’s second turn as a leader in the ’80s. That Horner wanted to be so much on position of power that he sold out and turned Liberal. Up to that point he was actually a real solid no nonsense conservative.
    This guy is a socialist only one degree removed from Redford.
    Both of those present the rhetoric that basically says that the socialists are right but we are not socialist. As a matter of fact, there was a political “scientist” from the University of Calgary on Rutherford show who actually said that if some of the candidates for leadership are not elected, they will leave the PC party. No kidding.
    Then there is this other man, Gary Mar. He is a rather known quality from the time of Ralph Klein. He was the minister of health during that period. Seems he is in the middle of politics. You get the drift that he will spend, though he will not talk about it. He did talk on Rutherford radio program saying that some private health care can be acceptable.
    Of course the media presented it as american thinking, the guy was Alberta’s representative in NY cocktail circuit.
    The one thing is clear, these people maybe progressives, though they are not conservatives.
    On the other hand, there is that other party, The Wild Rose. The leader, Danielle Smith is a conservative though from time to time gets seduced into socialist thinking when the situation demands it.
    Some of the candidates for this party are a poor choice. It is possible, if the peasants are angry enough, that they will be elected. Hard to think about the outcome if the candidates are not known.

  9. Ezra just took apart some Wild Rose rep last night on air for their policy to strengthen the HRCs and allow for “government costs”.So if Ezra had lost his HRC case he would have had to pay a fine, AND for the gubmint’s time and costs.
    WTF are these losers doing?
    There is giant hole in this country you could drive a bus through.
    How wacked are our political parties that none of them can get off the pipe of entitlement Nanny State tax and spend socialism.
    There is a huge opportunity here.
    People have had it!

  10. This is a puzzling thread.
    I’m of the opinion that there are no conservative parties who are not conservative in name only.
    libetariansaresmarter makes a smart observation.
    The shocking speed with which “conservatives” will back-pedal). (Smith is backing down on hate speech laws).
    Conservatism exists only in pre-election party platforms: pepsi to the other guy’s coke and swiftly jettisoned immediately after victory where the game becomes merely holding onto and expanding power.
    As I am often wont to say, “there’s no real conservative constituency”.
    Steyn said it best when he observed that modern “conservatives” merely keep the progressive agenda warm whilst waiting for the real progressives to return to power, claiming to be marginally better managers of this progressive agenda in the meantime.

  11. Not all the Wild Rose platform positions are perfect, but what they’ve got going on is a darn sight better than the spendthrifts trying to replace Stelmach.

  12. The recent unfavourable polling and press coverage given the Wildrose party has me thinking they actually have a chance.

  13. So the wild rose party is nothing more than a modern liberal party that panders to special interest groups whilst embracing Multiculturalism. She’s toast, I hope.

  15. Um, no Danielle Smith is not toast. She adjusted the “no HRC’s” thing because the media portrays you as an apologist for racists if you debate it. The mushy middle thinks the same.
    Gary Mar is a global warming skeptic and in favour of healthcare reform. I won’t lose any sleep if he’s elected…course…I’m still voting Wildrose.
    Alberta is still the heartland of conservatism. Wish the Sask Party would righten up. Brad Wall seems to just be waving the “we’re not NDP” flag. Is that really good enough?

  18. No Jeff, its not good enough. Brad Wall is worse than the commies were in some ways. The roads were bad when the commies ran the show but now they’re worse. At least where I live. Forgive me if I’m upset, but I just smashed into a huge mother of a pothole and buggered up something in the front end of my motorcycle.
    Here’s how they fix highways in my area: Take a perfectly good paved road (there is the odd one), cover it with oil, then throw stones over top thus allowing the traffic to flatten everything out. The result is a rough, rippled, grooved and rutted, half gravel, half something, monstrosity.
    Sorry for the off topic rant.

  20. Think on this folks. The “so called Conservatives” know their enemy. There will be a flurry of negative articles about Wild Rose as a Party. Just like Klein did to the WCC party. Most where fiction.
    The Herald & Journal will prop up the Conservatives because they know better than us how left leaning they are.
    I don’t trust the press anymore than I would a nuke in my back yard.

  21. The PeeCee’s were never a conservative government going back to t lougheed. His record of interference in business, the long standing mess he left with owning magnesium plants, airlines etc is not the stuff of Conservative government. He is now offering advice on the Keystone pipeline that are consistent with his anti conservative views.
    His successors have been no better and the current crop is deplorable. Because Alberta is a one party state every moonbat calls himself a PC. They may be progressive but they certainly arn’t conservative.

  22. I’ve been supporting WildRose for over 4 years from BC. I fully expect the media will smear them as much as possible as they near power.
    The difference between BC and AB is that there are core groups of thinking people in AB who are willing to roll up theur sleeves and do something about their left leaning politics. The Wild Rose is the provincial offspring of the Reform movement. Many of the members come from Reform.
    I have suggested in the past that candidates for government have to take an accounting exam to qualify. Ever since politicans were allowed to spend more than they took in, our society has regressed in real terms. The politicans and their hangers-on now refer this as investment. It is simple bribery of an increasing illiterate constituency.

  23. The PC’s are big PROGRESSIVE and little conservative. The two terms are mutually exclusive and the Progressives have the reins.
    My MLA, Woo-Paw, will not answer any questions I ask regarding “Hiding the decline” or windmill bird/bat deaths or Climategate. I do receive plenty of emails showing her at photo-ops, smiling as she spends taxpayer money.
    Rob Ford in Toronto shows how Conservatives can win. Stand strong on principle, reject progressive “comprimise”, call the media on their bigotry and bias and do what you say you will do.
    BTW. Anyone believing Gary Mar is a conservative will be sorely disappointed. He will ride the polls like a flag in the wind. He can speak “conservative” but he doesn’t live it.
    Sadly, I can see a CINO running the show again and filling the HRC, pension, and progressive bureacratic coffers to the brim while telling us what we can say, do, eat, drink, and think.
    I’m leaning toward Wild Rose (though they too would not respond to any climate related questions. I think the progfessional political parasites see a mountain of green money and they simply can’t say no.)

  24. Lev: You obviously dont read much about the candidates. I’ve watched Redford for several years, and she is about as right wing as they come. People try to knock her as a “feminist lawyer”. I dont know if she actually is a feminist but isnt this sort of thing what we always complain about – that the left tries to usurp environmentalism, feminism etc. and paint us all as club-wielding cavepeople? And frankly, she was one of the best solicitors-general that we have ever had in Alberta. Go google some of the annoucements that she made in that portfolio and then call her a lefty.
    That said, Mar will win this election. As even the Calgary Herald wrote recently, Danielle Smith’s reference to Mar as a lefty defies belief and was a weak attack. Here is a guy who is a vocal global warming skeptic and has actually campaigned in favour of private health care, and Smith tries to call him a lefty? Um, weak…..
    We Albertans sometimes forget how well we have it. That is until we spend some time in another province. Fortunately, the miserable spring that the Wildrose Alliance had has caught up to them, and they are polling below the Liberals.
    Albertans: vote how you want, but be careful about splitting the vote and losing the sensible, stable government that we have here. You might not like what you get.

  25. stampy
    I wouldn’t put any faith in polls. People don’t trust the pollsters anymore & just tell them what they want to hear. Thank the HRC’s for that.
    As for having it good, your right, but in spite of Red Eddy & his legions of watermelons.

  26. Cripes I thought Alberta wouldn’t crap the bed politically AGAIN. Kate? Any tips on Sask real estate?
    Besides crashing on my cousins’ couch in Saskatoon…

  27. Believe it or not, I can square with political pragmatism to a degree. I don’t expect Alberta to jump straight to The Republic of Libertopia under most any leader, but I do expect a party like the WRA to push very hard in the right direction, especially in Alberta, or they are just not worth supporting. This HRC decision is incompatible with that direction. It would be a mistake to give up on the WRA. It would be a good idea to not give them any money until the party makes it crystal clear that free speech is paramount. If you don’t stamp it, you get the CPC over and over again.
    It’s good to see some here are beginning to understand just how bad it’s gotten. I’d say this is the worst it’s been since the height of Treudopia. The situation is pretty close to hopeless when Brad Wall is considered a “hero” of the Right. Could have learned from the experience south of the border, but no, you guys wanted the ‘lesser evil’.

  28. I really don’t know how Ontario election will turn out.
    Even seeing how the Lib and NDP signs, installed with just a nod of approval from the [predominantly] Indian housewives in my community get pulled from the ground by their Indian husbands coming home from work in the evening, I am doubtful about the prospects of Ontario PC.
    We have to choose between McGuinty and Hudak.
    God, help us!

  29. The difference between the Wildrose and the PC’s is how the policies are brought up to be voted on. The PC’s are a “top down” party where the members must vote on policies suggested by the mla’s. The “bottom up” approach that the Wildrose party holds, gives the members full power to bring forward policy changes to be voted on by all active members. This doesn’t necessarily guarantee that all policies will be “conservative”, but then again not all members are of the exact same nature.
    I voted for Wildrose in the last election and I will again the next time around, and if it wasn’t for us uprooting our lives out of Calgary I would still be on the board for our old constituency.
    The only question I ask of those who are planning to vote for the PC’s, what are you expecting given the track record for the past few years?
    Ted Morton might have been a conservative but he surely didn’t stand up for conservatives, so really what was the point? The PC’s say they are conservative but don’t act like it, so what is the point?
    My fear in the next provincial election is that the PC’s get in once again because people believe too much in the name of a party and forget what they actually stand for.
    SCREW THE DRUNKEN RED TORIES!!!

  30. Consider this. Since Klein slew the debt. The PC’s have posted around 50B in surplus funds each year until Stelmach the Commie got in into power. That money has all been spent buying votes it is gone and Albertan’s are in hock again. This does not include the Sovereign Debt of Alberta which according to The Fraser Reports is between 55/60B dollars. The PC’s invented the Heritage Fund and then looted it. Norway which started their Heritage Fund after Alberta, and has about the same level of population now has 300B sitting in their Heritage Fund. The PC’s have always have their rubber hose ready to steal the gas from our Heritage Fund. But the biggest crime of all committed by the Fat As*ed Liberals of the PC Party of Alberta has been the property theft under Bills 19, 36 and 50. Also keep in mind that the Peter the Puke Lougheed was the main Premier who insisted in not having property rights enshrined in the Constitution Act 1982. Even Trudeau the Commie A*s Kisser was amazed. The only Premier who wanted Property Rights protected was Premier Sterling from Manitoba. The Fat As*ed Liberal PC Party of Alberta has begun to think they own Albertan’s and our property. Bring on the Election. Go Wildrose Go…..

  31. I’ve been quietly helping with my local Wildrose CA for a couple years now, and have learned just how entrenched the PCs really are. We have people in our constituency helping anonymously because they fear for their jobs, or their spouses’ jobs, if it got out that they were helping us. And there is jokingly the “374 dollar club”…we get a lot of $374 donations because $375 is the threshold at which you must reveal your donor’s identity to Elections Alberta. You wouldn’t believe how that body operates…it might as well be a subcommittee of the PC Party.
    Unrelated: how does Gary Mar, who left politics in scandal only a few years ago, get a free ride from the media now that he’s back as the returning hero? And are the memories of the PC members voting for him really that short? It’s baffling.

  32. Property Rights (From Wild Rose Platform)
    One of the most fundamental roles of government is the protection and preservation of property rights. Without such protection, our entire economy would cease to function. Property rights are the foundation of each individual and family’s financial security and prosperity…
    Now, that’s what a TRUE Conservative sounds like.
    Anybody heard Harper or Hudak making those noises?

  33. Jamie – you don’t remember Harper being raked over the coals by the Liberals for mentioning property rights? Something about the premise that property rights would create slavery! Ring a bell now?

  34. Hey stampy, seems that you are infatuated by the lady. One can understand that if one gets on a wagon with somebody, one should stay on even if it kills him. Disregarding the pronouncements of the candidate and “….read….about the candidates” is a clever sleight of hand.
    Your candidate pronounced in the past two weeks that she will spend millions and millions of CAD’s so she can get elected. You can believe the write-ups, the pronouncements though are something else altogether. Sounds more like religious belief than workable political platform.
    Besides that, if you learn from history, there were those in NYT that wrote nice things about Stalin. There were no doubt those that wrote nice things about low lifes and scoundrels.
    Then again maybe you were in it so long that it does not smell anymore.
    Wild rose is tripping of late, though this morning on the news it was pretty clearly said that wild rose were going to get rid of the HRC and replace it with something that does not have the dragon claws. It could by another political sleight of hand. Will just have to see how it crystallizes.
    And another thing, stampy, this statement about splitting votes is an old worn out phraseology that belongs to the garbage dump of politics. You vote for whomever you like, though if you don’t vote wild rose, to use your own words, you are splitting the vote.
    Sounds stupid?
    No doubt, you came up with it.

  35. I agree with you Lev, “splitting the vote” is an old term used by politicians to get you to vote the way you would rather not want to.
    Win or lose I will always vote for the party I want to win.

  36. I recognize that no political party is going to meet every ‘demand’ I may make of them. I also realize that any government must rule for all the governed not just their fan base. That being said I will continue to vote for the most Conservative alternative I have available. With the exception of the time when Ralf cut the government spending and taxes I have not been able to vote for the PC party of Alberta. The two liberals and Special Ed the Second running for the Premiership leave me no option but to vote WRA.

  37. There’s a good reason why all pols go soft toward the politically correct and the lefty claptrap.
    There is a generation of 20 somethings who are thoroughly indoctrinatied with that crap…. so much so that they will not come around for a decade or more.
    The commies in the education system have a death grip on the children.

  39. The Alberta advantage (low tax, low cost of living, reasonable housing costs, small government) was in critical condition in Klein’s 2nd term when the party had more reds than blues and expanded government size and spending as separation politics waned. The death rattle was the election of Red Ed Stelmach who took the Tories from a populist party to a central planning elitist ruling junta and the nail in the coffin was election of Mar (whose campaign color was NDP orange), he will assemble an all red cabinet and out of survival, eliminate the blue players one by one until the PCs are a defacto Dipper-lib-left coalition under a blue banner. Ralph’s everything for everybody party has morphed into the everything but tory party.
    Alberta’s long term resource wealth cycle has the affluence to attract the type of kleptocrat parasites who seize and maintain power by buying votes with the treasury – watch the next PC general campaign, it will be all about the incumbent PCs handing out election candy. The political maturation cycle from rural based conservative hard work ethic and productivity to leftist waste of the affluence is complete in AB. Most of the imported work force is from back east and they think tax and bribe politics are normal – never been exposed to western populist conservatism and frugal administration. They’ll line up like lemmings for the next PC raid on the treasury – subsidized car loans or tuition loans or home reno subsidy or some such Dipper style vote bait. The Alberta of the early oil years is dead. The urban-centric head office commodity gouging affluence blinded drunken Dipper with a paycheck Alberta has arrived. It won’t last long once a progressivist left Kleptocracy runs it
    There is only one choice for true conservatives, libertarians and populists in AB and that’s Danielle Smith’s Wild Rose party – which Ezra Levant exposed the other day as possibly having a squishy pink core who went soft on repealing the AHR act’s free speech censorship in attempts to urbanize their sales pitch. What other conservative populist policies they will likely soften or back track as they get more popular is any one’s guess. I think they smell the shift in the political winds are leading to the affluent government candy store and away from frugal hands off administration. I’d be surprised to see WRP’s message of freedom and small government win against the Mac Daddy handouts to all segments that are bound to come in the next General election where the new all red PCs are desperate to maintain power and a political future. I think the red PCs will maintain a government and will change the political landscape by buying votes with a fat treasury. The new Alberta will be as entitlement dependent tax hungry and inflationary as the other collectivist provinces. I’m certainly not jumping at the opportunity to move back.
    We shall see. I’ve been wrong before – but not often.

  40. I think ralph klien was one of a kind i know he wasn’t operfect buth e was soo much better than what we have now …i will vote for the wild rose and even though danielle smith is supportiveo f mother slaughter there unborn children i think this will give the pc’s a wake up call or allow another conservative party to form and destroy the red tories!!!
    I do think the wild rose does have a good foundation of what alberta is and all about , i agree with the above poster that i will not vote for them unless they clearly openly and publicly repeal section 3 of the human right’s commision in alberta.
    Someone posted earlier that danielle smith has re-done her party platfor with regards to justice policing and human right’s
    http://www.wildrosecaucus.ca/justice-policing-human-rights/
    Have a read , courtesy of another marc in calgary.

  41. A while back I did a search of the AB PC party website and the only place where I found the word “conservative” was in documents of party incorporation. Think LIberal party of Canada and you will get the drift of the AB PC party’s politics and culture.
    As for the Wildrose party (they dropped “alliance” at this past summers convention) it supports:
    getting rid of the HRC,
    Right to work legislation
    A far tougher stance on equalization
    Smaller government
    A new approach to healthcare that creates accountability and freedom for both the providers and the consumers of those services
    Property rights (the AB PCs are in deep deep trouble in rural Alberta over this issue)
    It is easily the most conservative party in Canada that has a realistic chance at winning power.
    PS – Robert, if you’re in AB for a while drop me a line – I owe you lunch.

  42. What type of mental derangement could make anyone be in favor of HRC’s? I’ll have to wander over to the WRP site to find out what they’re reasoning is.
    HRC’s aren’t something that people think about on a daily basis unless there is some egregious violation of free speech rights as a result of these statist bastards.
    Maybe in BC the queers would object to the elimination of their favorite government agency to prevent any evidence-backed criticism of their very unhealthy homosexual lifestyle, but I didn’t think there were many homosexuals in Alberta and that they’d all moved to downtown Vancouver. I couldn’t care less how downtown Vancouver votes as they only elect deranged moonbats to government.
    Now if Alberta had a warmer climate, not the 9 months of winter and 3 months of bad sledding, I’d be moving there myself.

  43. Had faint hope for the Alberta Party, then destroyed my membership card when it was obviously infiltrated by moonbat progressives. The formative constituency meeting was like trying to make a pig from sausage.
    Then bought a PC membership card hoping Griffiths would gain support for his libertarian stance. He lost & caved to Mar’s red agenda. Tore up another card.
    We Libertarian may well wander the political wilderness for another 40 years looking for the promised land.

  44. Jamie – you don’t remember Harper being raked over the coals by the Liberals for mentioning property rights? Something about the premise that property rights would create slavery! Ring a bell now?
    Posted by: the bear at September 27, 2011 8:27 PM
    Oh yeah… way back in ’06, right? That would be the same year he had property rights on his campaign flyers.
    And you said that the “Liberals’ raked him over the coals, eh? Five years ago.
    So, remind me again, what did he do about that?

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