“Our members have now seen that some of our policies were rejected by Albertans, quite frankly. We will be revisiting some of those. You can’t run a government if you don’t get sanction from the people…There may also be a stronger statement to make about climate change and our policy around greenhouse gas emissions.”
h/t Davenport
EBD;
The “story” of this election – that Wildrose failed, and that the PCs’ leftward-drifting policies have been validated and vindicated — is based entirely on false and inflated expectations created by a few highly anomalous and transitory poll results. It’s disappointing, and a bit disheartening, that Danielle Smith would overreact to the mistaken perception that Wildrose’s historic breakthrough is a rejection by wrenching the bone from the mouth of her supporters and tossing it to her detractors who have absolutely no interest in it.
It had to have been a stressful campaign; maybe she should get off the hamster wheel for a week or two and look at the larger picture, and try to re-understand what side her bread is buttered on. The lions share of the 2008 Liberal vote, which went from 26 percent to less than 10 percent, obviously went to the PCs, yet the PCs still received the lowest percentage of the popular vote since 1967. In other words, the PCs *clearly* lost a huge number of conservative-minded voters to Wildrose (who went from 7 percent four years ago to 35 percent), and made their gains on the prog-left. The Wildrose party is now the de facto conservative option in a traditionally conservative province, and they didn’t achieve his breakthrough by courting progressives and public sector unions and warmists, or by being too conservative by the standards of the prog media like the Edmonton Journal’s Graham Thompson, who wrote: “And then there was Smith’s own bozo eruption when she insisted the jury was still out on the science of human-induced climate change. That got her loudly booed from the audience at a leaders’ debate hosted by CBC and no doubt had Albertans imagining with some alarm the prospect of a Wildrose premier embarrassing the province on the world stage by denying global warming.”, or the Journal’s editorialists: “We can look forward to a government less prone to circling the wagons against outsiders with talk of firewalls, and one much better able to defend our resource industry by being willing to speak the same scientific language as the rest of the world.”
If Danielle Smith thinks that such twee, left-leaning urbanite media are the spokespeople for her swelling constituency she’s making a serious mistake. I was talking to some of my neighbours yesterday (I live in a traditionally very conservative, rural area), all of whom voted PC. Small sample, obviously, and anecdotal, but in each case their choice had absolutely *nothing* — nada, zip – to do with global warming, or conscience rights, or scary, homophobic Christians, or anything else the media’s post-mortem, which Smith seems to have taken to heart, has focused on. Instead, they were simply unsure about Wildrose – not unsure in the active sense of being distrustful for any particular reason, they just didn’t know a single thing about the local candidate.
It’s good to have a likeable and smart party leader, but in a province chock full of multi-term incumbents from the dynastic juggernaut party, the upstart party HAS to give people a reason to vote for the local candidate; a brief website bio saying that he’s a husband and father who has bought and sold five businesses just doesn’t cut it.
In Alberta, the center is right wing by progressive standards. Wildrose needs to stay the course by chipping away at — courting — this right-leaning center rather than trying to curry favour with the prog/warmist left.
This is getting just to hard to read, I am no Redford fan, but this vitriol is unhealthy, she didn’t choke a protester, or facilitate a brown bag theft, or set up a useless registry just to steal public funds, so the level of sour grapes is baffling. WRP has some good ideas, but when a candidate can be elected without even living in the riding, without attending most of the forums and not a clue about agriculture or the needs of Livingstone Macleods residents, it looks to me there were a lot of slack jaws that were told scary stories. Some of you people are reminding me of the African villages where the local shaman spreads a rumor that black haired people are evil and need to be hunted and killed, and before reality takes hold 500 black haired people are dead, then the last one standing looks in a mirror. WRP hired a dirty jobless lawyer to spew, he was successful to a great degree, so be happy people.
Ebt >
I know what you’re trying to say, but I see it a little differently.
We now have “some” directly representative right wing opposition in the legislator, where there was none before. We also have some old guard in the PC party, still with some influence and even better now have a viable place to defect, if absolutely necessary.
There is now a light cast onto the progressives that they can’t ignore, and a whole pile of voters that voted for the status quo for many different reasons, but many simply uninformed or jumping off the fence into the comfort zone they think they know. That could easily go the other way with further progressive misstep.
Another point is that although the PC’s kept seats, many were by a very small margin. Nearly half the voters actually voted WRP but lost by a narrow margin of a few votes, they’re pissed that they weren’t counted in the 17 seats that won. It wouldn’t take much to overcome the extra votes the next time around.
Recheck the vote count (riding by riding). Many of the PC “victories” were by the skin of their teeth.
Alberta, you have just elected a socialist governemet. Is this what you whished?
The political litmus test of this awful woman is when she demands Alberta shuts down, or does somethingnelseanyway, to prevent global warming … 3…2…..1…
I liked danielle smith and her campaign i thought it was very well executed however to agree with danielle hates red tories is exactly it …there are becoming fewer and fewer conservatives with the more andm ore baiting buy leftist policies like big nanny state policies that keep unionized workers protected and fat off of the publice private sectors back !!1
Let us see now.
The news manufacturers decided that the reason, the Wildrose did not get enough votes was:
1. preachers said things to their followers.
To be sure, preachers should remember that they are a big target of the “journalists”, they hang on every move of the lip to see that any word, sentence can and will be used against them. While it should not matter that a person is a preacher, it apparently does.
Here is a suggestion, preachers should create their own party. It is doubtful if it would last one election cycle. They can’t even get together on religion, much less on secular matters.
2. because the leaderess of Wildrose said that climate change was not settled or something to that effect.
As your agent mentioned before, the only error in the statement of Wildrose leaderess was that the appropriate terminology to use was anthropogenic global warming instead of climate change. She would be on solid ground and could support her position by an avalanche of evidence.
To repeat, AGW is a myth, climate change is a constant.
Then of course, the “journalists” went ballistic, endlessly spinning the stories to nonsense.
It is interesting to note how “journalists” completely dominate politicians. Politicians are afraid and mortified of getting bad review, so they succumb to the prevailing winds created by “journalists”.
After the elections every “journalist” and their grandmother created the propaganda, that the Wildrose lost and they lost because of the two points above.
Conclusion here is that Wildrose actually won and big time, they were nobody, now they are official opposition. There are few and none parties in the world that win their right to govern on the first run.
Why they did not get enough votes to form a government is still to be decided. The “journalists” had a band wagon to jump on, none could be the last one to get on, so they created simple, wholly wrong reasons to suggest that they know. They don’t know dick (don’t know why they say that, though they do). One thing is true though, they need to fill space between the adds, if it takes bull$it to do it matters not.
For Wildrose now, it is important they control their nerves. Those that voted for them, did so because they, for lack of better term, agreed to their policies, to question that would be a major error.
Changing their policies on main issues would show that they are not ready to go on with their plan, might even say that it would be a sign of weakness.
Progressives lost 7.85% of the seats in the legislature, Wildrose increased their seats in the legislature by 325%.
The popular vote decreased for the Progressives by 8.77%, and increased by 27.51% for Wildrose.
Now, it is up to the Wildrose to hold steady on their program. Wholesale change would be a costly error. The leader of Wildrose is an excellent communicator, she should keep it up, clearly communicate their intentions to those that did not get it. Be a sharp opposition to show the hesitant that they can handle the conditions for forming a government in four years from now.
Essentially, Albertans cheered and voted for the party that pulled a Barney doll on a principled conservative.
As much as I hate to admit it…Alberta isn’t that much different then the ROC when it comes to politics.
The right got 34%…something to work from…but nothing more.
I think I’ll be working more and talking less…
Well said EBD!
Stay the course Danielle Smith and Alberta’s Wildrose Party!
Seems to me that journalists exercise ‘conscience rights’ everyday they put pen to paper and decide which political stripe to demonize.
Ha ha True Story:
Just a few minutes ago I saw a couple of “disenfranchised youth” hiding in the forest of trees in my back yard. I was going to get my gun and site them in like Vietnam ( they really looked like Viet Cong) but then saw the yellow strip of backup RCMP walking past them deeper in the bush (obviously searching).
So I then went out and yelled at them to “get the f*ck off my property” and several RCMP recon backup rushed in for the arrest. Not sure what they did to be hiding there, but I just came indoors and back to blogging. What the hell has happened to my Alberta?
No knocks on the door so I guess it’s all under control.
“I liked danielle smith and her campaign i thought it was very well executed however to agree with danielle hates red tories is exactly it …there are becoming fewer and fewer conservatives with the more andm ore baiting buy leftist policies like big nanny state policies that keep unionized workers protected and fat off of the publice private sectors back !!1
Posted by: paul in calgary at April 25, 2012 9:40 PM ”
Paul- You’ve been posting here quite awhile and we know your political bent…
But gawd, man, have you never used the ‘Preview’ button to see what you’re about to post?
Above for example. Capitalizing, punctuation, mis-spacing, spelling, etc can be caught and re-worked. It doesn’t take a lot of time, but a coherent message is much better.
I don’t mean to provoke, but I think you’d help your own cause by taking an extra minute or two….
shove it bartinsky. It is not our fault you were stupid enough to vote for a leftie. Redford is worse. She is some scumbag human rights lawyer and UN commando.
Daniel hates red Tories that is hilarious. But essentially you are correct. She made a great argument – not her fault the voters are too dense.
That was a great comment EBD. Please send it to Danielle Smith before she actually caves to the media party.
I just had a twitter convo with @electdanielle…I gave her credit for going hard and I voiced a few concerns…FWIW…
In Alberta, the center is right wing by progressive standards. Wildrose needs to stay the course by chipping away at — courting — this right-leaning center…
What you end up with is a right-leaning centrist Wild Rose party. Not much different than what is in power now.
Change minds, don’t join them.
On other faction that played a huge part in this election is the unions.
I have been hearing of union reps going to hospitals and talking to immigrants about how WRP was going to shut down the unions and they would be out of a job.
Teachers saying they had to vote PC because they wanted to have a job on Tuesday.
Unions worked behind the scenes to get the PC’s elected and it worked.
The poster who said Conservative union members need to work within was right.
I for one am tired of being told by the tolerant left that my ideas are wrong, my views are backward and old fashioned and that my party is one of racists and homophobes and deniers.
Danielle Smith stay the course, go door to door get your policies out their. THEY WILL COME!!
Your numbers were good, next time!!
Environmental issues weren’t the problem! You came a long way baby look at the numbers!!!!
I said it before and I’ll say it again, I really do wonder if Kate set up this blog to expose the whackos and lunatics that populate the land. Some of the comments above are just baffling. Where the heck do you think you live who the heck do you think you are? A jew in Nazi dominated Europe circa 1942? Get a grip.
If some (not all) of the viewpoints here are reflective of the mindsets on the other side of the political spectrum, well… I’ve been living in a la la land believing that there were mostly reasonable people populating the land.
It is truly astonishing.
Anyways…
The Wet One
The WRP committed a major strategic/tactical error in their haste to nominate a candidate in every riding without first thoroughly vetting all nominees.
I’m reminded of the old story of a young bull and an old bull on a hill surveying a herd of heifers grazing in the pasture below them. The young bull says “Let’s run down there and have our way with one of them.” The old bull says “Nah, let’s walk down there and have our way with all of them.”
Paul >
Jeepers, for a jealous, washed-out failed farmer you still think about sex and cows too much.
The Wet One .
“I’ve been living in a la la land believing that there were mostly reasonable people populating the land.
It is truly astonishing.”
Yea, it must be weird getting that reality bitch-slap and finding out that it’s you that has been the problem all along and not everyone else around you. You hear about these look in the mirror revelations occasionally, to bad more don’t do it.
Paul >
Apologies Paul, I mistook you for the phil troll that only blogs here to whine about farmers 24/7.
Must have been the cow sex metaphor.
Knight:
Your Mea Culpa is accepted -my SDA handle will henceforth be Neo. (as in Neo-Luddite) That said, IMHO Luddism has been unfairly vilified – I define it as personal empowerment, Libertarianism if you will.
Funny, out here, the indefatigable Alex Tsakumis, who has an obsessive hatred of Christie Clark, took time out to accuse the whole loss of the election (in Alberta) on some intemperate words (from the pulpit)about homosexuality, and the fear of the Conscience clause for doctors not wishing to do abortions, as the one and only cause W.R.s defeat. If you disagree you will be experience his wrath. He really does go on about the same thing every election.