Greener grass

Well nobody can accuse Alberta politics of being boring. It appears that Sandra Jansen thinks that the grass in the NDP pasture is greener than the grass in the Progressive Conservative pasture.
She discovered at the Policy Convention in Red Deer that Jason Kenny seemed to have more support with his more right wing views than she did with her extreme progressive views.
She also discovered that the delegates were not bashful about expressing the difference to her. She labeled these expressions as harassment and bullying.
What to do? Why find a pasture with greener grass.
This sure looks like a sequel to the last movie. To jump to a different party without consulting the people who were responsible for your election is arrogance in the extreme.
The Wildrose MLA’s who crossed the floor en mass without  consulting  either the party or the members of the party did not work out very well for them two years ago.  Not one of them got re-elected in their new home.
The same fate awaits Sandra Jansen. I rather suspect that she will get the message loud and clear before the next election and will not run again.
What those Wildrose MLA’s did succeed in doing was creating enough uncertainty with voters that the Wildrose party was not able to gain enough support to form government.
People were so sick and tired of the old PC party that they thought the NDP were a better bet to get rid of them.
Well that hasn’t work out very well either. Alberta is now in the worst financial mess in the history of the province.
Sandra Jansen tried to join the NDP some time ago but at that time the NDP hierarchy thought that two sort of right wing parties would split the vote enough to allow the NDP to come up the middle and get reelected.
Now it looks like Jason Kenny may win the leadership of the PC’s and possibly unite with the Wildrose and form one conservative party.
If this happens they need to change their strategy.  The columnists in the Sun newspapers think what they are trying to do now is get all the progressives to support them by claiming that they are actually centrists.
They are also trying to use Allison Redford’s strategy of scare tactics to make the conservatives look like right wing extremists.
If Kenny is successful in becoming the new PC leader, politics in this province still has the potential to get messy. Whether he wins or not, the PC’s are still a progressive party and to me that means that they are really liberal.
I think there will be a real problem of matching their policies with the Wildrose. To me the most difficult issues to reach agreement on will be reducing the size of government and climate change policy.
Regardless of weather, Jason Kenny is leader or not, that party will do everything they can to drag their feet on reducing the size of the bureaucracy in that government. You can also bet that they will still insist that we need to reduce carbon emissions.
If the Wildrose party is to stay true to its grassroots they will have to demand that there is a complete repeal of the NDP carbon tax and their climate change policy.
As well the PC’s would have to agree to reducing government expenditures by reducing the number of government bureaucrats and repealing some of the NDP social policy.
Even if Kenny does become to new PC leader he will have a very difficult time moving that old party away from their ingrained progressive policies.
That is really why they lost the last election. That new leader did not change anything, he just made it worse.