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The Empire Strikes Back
The moral of the story is likely that dynasties do not crumble overnight. The decline of Rome lasted hundreds of years. The Oilers won a cup after dealing Gretzky. The Empire was good for two more movies, even after the Death Star blew up. …
The situation in this election is eerily similar to the 2004 federal campaign, when 2012 Wildrose campaign manager Tom Flanagan — then working for the federal Conservatives – tried to lead an upstart right wing band of misfits to victory against the natural governing party. In both instances, the incumbent dynasties had knifed successful leaders, and had unrealistic expectations for their new leaders. Just as anonymous PC strategists lamented about winning “too many seats” in February, in 2004 Liberal strategists mused about 200 seats for Paul Martin (which in fairness, Martin got – it just took him two elections to do it).
In both instances, the incumbent badly mismanaged a scandal (Adscam for Paul, the “no meet committee” for Redford), and threw caution to the wind by calling an election in the midst of it. In both instances, Flanagan’s great right hope rose in the polls, pulled into the lead, won the debate…and then blew it in the bottom of the 9th. Both times voters stared change in the face, and decided they weren’t ready for it – yet.
We all know how things turned out federally, and therein lies the cautionary tale for all the players in Alberta. The Wildrose Party now has a base of 35% of the Alberta electorate. They have an impressive, albeit inexperienced, leader in Danielle Smith who now has four years to refine her skills and weed out the thornier candidates from her party’s ranks. If Stephen Harper could make the federal Conservatives look “non-scary”, then surely the photogenic and charismatic Smith can pull off the same trick in Alberta.
I’ll say now that I saw those tendencies, too, but where I differed is that I thought that Wildrose had a large enough lead that they’d win a narrow majority anyway.
We’ll see how it goes. Smith looks like a more charismatic version of Harper, but Harper has a ruthless streak that every successful leader needs. His 2004-05 experience made the current PM ruthlessly pragmatic. Maybe Smith has that streak, maybe not. In any event, the next four years will be interesting.
Update: Checking myself — how much of this is hindsight analysis?
No, I wrote it:
About threshold arguments — you can see that Warren Kinsella’s blog is full of them re Danielle Smith, this week.
Will they work? In the long run, no — they didn’t work for Paul Martin, ultimately, against Stephen Harper. But they may work for Redford’s party the way they did for Martin’s — they can stave off defeat for one more election, in a campaign that looked lost a week before E-day.
Okay, I can show that I did see it.
Alberta Fight Night
9:25 PM EDT: Sun News is calling the potential defenstration of the Tories “regime change”. ‘Nuff said.
CBC coverage starts in five minutes online here, and in half an hour on Newsworld.
10:02 PM: Polls closed. Rock and roll!
10:39 PM: Starting to look like Redford may have succeeded in scaring the left in Alberta to vote for her.
If she wins the ridings she’s now leading in, she may have a majority government. A slim majority, but a majority all the same.
10:55 PM: Maybe it won’t be such a slim majority? PCs seem to be pulling away — 10% lead in popular vote, upper 50s seat-count out of an 87-seat legislature.
11:00 PM: PCs have an 11-point spread in popular vote now, leading or elected in 61 of 87 seats.
Okay, I’m thinking now that a bunch of people looked at their local candidates for Wildrose and said, “Yeah, not so much.”
As this may be a pretty solid — thumping? — majority for Redford.
11:07 PM: Reminder to certain media personalities — don’t dance on the other fellow’s grave till you’re sure he’s dead.
11:14 PM: CBC calls it — PC majority government.
Joe Clark Progressive Conservativism lives!
11:24 PM: There was a Liberal/NDP strategic vote, yes, but Wildrose also lost 5-10% in the last week.
Something went on in that last week. Very interesting.
Midnight: Final analysis of the night: in the last week, about 5% of the electorate went from the Liberals and NDP to the PCs, and about 5% of the electorate went from Wildrose to the PCs.
There you get a 10-point swing to the PCs, and a thumping majority for Redford.
Smith has four years to whip her forces into shape and take another run at it.
8 AM, next morning: Interesting reading in the SDA thread about last night.
There are some meaty comments from Jay Currie and Gord Tulk, who back going full libertarian.
Shit happens.
The WRP economic message was clear and sound.
The fear was generated using the minor notes of the socon side of the party. And, not terribly surprisingly, it turns out that there is not a huge audience for that message.
WRP got hit with the Progressives’ traditional fear tactics. In a few years they will do better.
At the same time, the fact is that there are a lot of latte sippers in Alberta. Progressives in the most unthinking sense of that term. The attempt to paint the WRP as uncool, barbarians succeeded simply because these sorts of people are so easily frightened.
A bad day for the conservative world; but also a teaching moment as our PC friends would say.
Time to go full on libertarian. It’s all about choice. Individual choice.
Tulk:
It was the fundamentalist – social conservative stances of just a handful of candidates that sunk the Wildrose as it was the case for Stock Day’s Canadian Alliance party and for Stephen Harper with the newly created Conservative Party.
What followed for the CPC was a purge of much of the socons and certainly they have never been a significant force in policy development.
That must now happen within the Wildrose. It has been helpful in this regard that virtually every single socon candidate was defeated. And it was even more helpful that many (two dozen?) libertarian candidates in Calgary went down to defeat as a result as well. These libertarians and their support teams will be looking to prevent it from happening a second time. …
The Wildrose finished with 9% fewer votes. The Liberals lost 4% to the PCs. That is not much of a margin to make up and with 18 MLAs the fight to get the message out will be far easier.
Shit happens.
Alison Redford: Just Visiting?
Hadn’t noticed this bit.
I was there until 1996 and then I came back to Calgary and I practised family law. I was in a partnership with a couple of people who were criminal defence lawyers, but I didn’t like that.
Q: Why not?
A: I’d come out of a South African tradition, which involved mediation, intraspace bargaining, all that kind of stuff. It was the beginning of the “getting to yes” model of the world. And I came back to Canada and practised family law, and saw a criminal law that was completely litigious and adversarial. I practised law for about four or five years in Calgary and then decided I wanted to go back to development work. I moved to Ottawa and managed a constitutional development project for the Canadian Bar Association. Our partner in South Africa was called the Legal Resources Centre; it did a lot of test-case litigation on freedom of expression, employee rights, whether pregnant women had the right to antiretroviral HIV drugs, that kind of stuff.
Q: Was there a moment when you considered committing to South Africa permanently?
A: Yes. When I lived in South Africa in 1995, I applied for citizenship. And they turned me down. I don’t think South Africa in 1995 was looking for a lot of white people to immigrate, quite honestly. So I just went through the normal process and didn’t get accepted, and I thought, well, that’s fate telling me it’s time to come home. Which it probably was.
So. She doesn’t like the Canadian legal system, and she tried to become a citizen in another place which she liked better.
This kinda helps explain Wildrose’s rise, no?
Surprised it didn’t get more play, that bit.
But I suppose once you’re in the top job, those ads don’t cut it. Same as how anyone is stupid who thinks running ads about his ties to the radical left would hurt President Obama sufficiently to defeat him this year — these were threshold arguments that aren’t worth much once a person has already crossed the threshold.
About threshold arguments — you can see that Warren Kinsella’s blog is full of them re Danielle Smith, this week.
Will they work? In the long run, no — they didn’t work for Paul Martin, ultimately, against Stephen Harper. But they may work for Redford’s party the way they did for Martin’s — they can stave off defeat for one more election, in a campaign that looked lost a week before E-day.
Strategy
So, the PC campaign is faceplanting.
What to do? Release this video. (I assume it’s them.)
Note that the early section involves making fun of Alberta. Then at 46 seconds, one of the ladies accuses Wildrose candidates of being, ugh, “BFFs with Stephen Harper”.
Stephen Harper? This Stephen Harper? The one who just won 75% of the vote in Calgary Southwest, leading a party that got 66.8% of the vote in Alberta?
I’m not sure that this was the strategy they were looking for.
Albertans go wild(rose)
Wildrose Alliance 41, Progressive Conservatives 31.
Among Albertans 18 years or older polled immediately after the election was called Monday for April 23, it was found that four-in-10 would back the Wildrose Party if the election was held today (41%).
That’s compared to just three-in-10 who would support the Progressive Conservatives (31%), an 11 point jump for Wildrose since Forum’s last poll in February, for a convincing double-digit lead.
In a toe-to-toe comparison, Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith has captured the lead, Bozinoff said, adding that Premier Alison Redford’s approval ratings — never strong — have dipped to pre-December levels.
“Danielle Smith has been ahead of her party in terms of approval ratings — she’s at 46% now. Once you get into the 40% zone, you just get a flood of seats that you’re likely to win,” he said.
Well, Tom Flanagan did say that the battleground for conservatism is provincial…
Wild Tom
Former Conservative national campaign manager Tom Flanagan will be running the spring election campaign for Alberta’s Wildrose Party, the latest sign that the allegiances of federal Conservatives are split in the party’s home base. …
In Mr. Flanagan, Wildrose gets a campaign manager with deep ties to the federal Conservative Party. He’s a University of Calgary professor and former colleague and confidant of Prime Minister Stephen Harper – whom Mr. Flanagan has nonetheless criticized occasionally since.
His hiring shows how Wildrose continues to tap into the Conservative base in its bid to dethrone the more centrist PCs.
“The number of years of experience he brings to the campaign is immense to us,” said Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith, who Monday’s poll showed as effectively tied, 40-39, in approval ratings with Ms. Redford. “He’s given a lot of focus to our efforts, and we’ll be ready to go whenever it is they decide to pull the plug.”
An election is expected in late April. Monday’s Forum Research Inc. poll showed the PCs with 38-per-cent support and projected to win 57 of the province’s 87 seats (the party currently holds 68 of 83 existing ridings). Wildrose had 29-per-cent support, up from 23 per cent a month earlier, and was projected to win 17 seats. The NDP was set to expand to five and the Liberals, currently the official opposition, were projected to retain just four seats. …
Conservative MPs from Alberta are under orders to stay neutral in the race, but some acknowledge there’s a split among their caucus, voters and donors. It was Ms. Smith – not then-premier Ed Stelmach – who was photographed with Mr. Harper at last summer’s Calgary Stampede, a meeting some federal Conservatives have pointed to as a signal. …
“You know what, I can only speak for my own perspective. I’ve got board members that are Wildrose members and I’ve got board members that are Progressive Conservatives in Alberta. My focus is on representing Alberta in the federal government,” MP Brian Storseth said in a recent interview, after a PC cabinet minister told a meeting in Mr. Storseth’s riding that the federal government didn’t understand Alberta’s needs.
“I think that’s what we need to focus on … and honestly, I do think that’s the sense of Alberta [Conservative] caucus for the most part. I don’t think there are too many guys out there actively campaigning for one side or the other.”
Best guess? Stephen Harper, private citizen, would be a Wildrose member. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper knows darn well not to get involved.
This is like the Ontario PCs in the 1990s looking at the federal scene — some were PCs, some were Reform/Alliance supporters, but all were determined not to bring that fight to the provincial stage.
