The end of empire postponed

Wildrose was too much, too fast, for voters to accept

Tom Flanagan, the conservative strategist who ran the campaign of the Wildrose Party and its leader, Danielle Smith, once wrote of the “incremental conservatism” of Stephen Harper — the slow, methodical victories that Harper needed to win in order to secure his agenda.

“Politics is a game that goes on forever,” Flanagan wrote. “You don’t have to win everything at once. The most important thing is to start to win even small victories, to lay the basis for bigger victories yet to come.”

The Wildrose Party, having come from nowhere in just over three short years, must keep this in mind as it looks to the future.

In retrospect, it would have been wise for the party to have adopted such an incremental strategy going into Monday’s provincial election. Instead, it barged ahead with a bullheaded, take-no-prisoners exuberance that resulted in another majority for the dynastic Progressive Conservatives.

The Wildrose might have crushed the Tories had it focused its attack on the PCS dim fiscal record and attacked it for its undeniable arrogance and sense of entitlement. Yet, Wildrose charged into battle with an uncompromising ideological fervour that resulted in a deeply conflicted electorate.

The party pushed radical measures that made voters nervous — the old Reform firewall policies of pulling out of the Canada Pension Plan and setting up a provincial police force, the dismantling of Alberta Health Services, the obliteration of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, the conscience rights of doctors and marriage commissioners to deny services that are against their beliefs, and the ideological purity of free speech, which forced Smith to defend insensitive remarks by two candidates. For too many voters, Wildrose came across as an angry mob. It was too much, too fast.

For their part, Alison Redford and the Progressive Conservatives portrayed themselves as a calm, steady voice.

Voters responded despite a host of mistakes so long they are difficult to catalogue. If anything, the results have shown that Alberta is not the same place of 20 or even 10 years ago, when the socalled “Alberta agenda” was at its peak. This is a very good place to live. Politically, voters decided the barn needed a new coat of paint, but it did not deserve to be kicked down.

Moving forward, we urge the Tories not to rule with impunity. Transparency is lacking and must be remedied.

Voters will not long tolerate the hubris of crushing majorities that result in questionable donations from ineligible organizations, letters to school officials warning them to keep quiet about students shivering in the cold, doctors who are muzzled, and labyrinthine payments to elected off icials who are paid for committees that never meet.

Redford has put a fresh face on the PC party. We congratulate her on her win, not just as a political leader, but as a mother and as the first elected female premier in Alberta history. She will be a good representative of a modern Alberta on the national and international stage, and she deserves the opportunity to bring her agenda forward.

We also congratulate Smith, who will at last be the formidable force in opposition that has been missing for so long. There will be many new faces in the legislature, a healthy regeneration of political blood.

It cannot go without mention that so many could be so wrong. Monday’s results show that pollsters, and many pundits, never grasped the lessons of the Calgary mayoralty race of 2010. The victory of Naheed Nenshi showed that landline polling systems that fail to reach the younger, untethered mobile generation have serious flaws.

Anyone who takes them as gospel ignores the modern reality of social networking and the ability of people to mobilize outside the norms of traditional political mechanisms.

It has been said that voter lists are the “key to the realm” in politics, when, in fact, it may be Twitter feeds that matter more.

Politically, voters decided the barn needed a new coat of paint, but it did not deserve to be kicked down.