Danielle Smith has been misread
Ex-Wildrose leader unprincipled? She did it for the common good
I think we have all been guilty of misjudging Danielle Smith. At the time, so many lifetimes ago, when the former Wildrose party leader deserted not only her former party but also her own former leadership of it, many people accused her and the eight other apostates who went with her of a cynical act of betrayal.
It was suggested that she had made a calculated decision to put power before principle. Lured by the promise of a voice in the councils of government, with no doubt a cabinet post to follow at a discreet interval, she had broken faith with her followers, indeed broken faith with herself — for what could a charter member of a party dedicated to grassroots democracy, ethics in government and lower taxes possibly find to like in a top-down, fat-cat, spend-happy bunch like the Alberta Progressive Conservatives?
Well, it turns out we had her all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Far from the amoral party switcher of caricature, Smith appears in fact to have been as innocent as a lamb, indeed almost helplessly naive, unwitting victim of the oldest con in the game: the bait and switch. You’ll recall that her defence of her actions back then was that Jim Prentice, newly installed as leader of the Progressive Conservatives and premier of the province, had made it impossible for her, in good conscience, to do her job: to oppose.
Hadn’t he promised to make the sorts of deep cuts in spending that her party — her former party, that is — had always stood for, and that Alberta, in its current fiscal straits, required? Hadn’t he demonstrated, in his short time in office, that he was a different kind of Progressive Conservative leader, that he would make a clean break with the old ways of the 43-year-old governing dynasty, the kind that had brought it into such low repute — so low, in fact, that it had very nearly given way to Smith’s Wildroseans, in the election just two years before? What was an opposition leader to do in such an unprecedented situation?
So you see, she hadn’t put power before principle. He’d put principle into power. Not only would it be wrong of her to oppose such a man, with such a plan — to be anywhere but by his side, helping him to implement it: that would be a betrayal. If that meant ditching the party she’d helped to build, abandoning the people who’d helped her to build it, starting all over again as a lowly government backbencher, well, do you think she did all this lightly? For such a trivial thing as personal gain? You think she didn’t know what sorts of unkind things people would say — were saying — about her? But she did it all for the common good.
Well, anyway, I imagine that was the sort of thing she and her fellow expats had told themselves after taking that fateful walk on the un Wild side. It wasn’t that they’d been spooked by some bad polls and a few inclement byelection results. They hadn’t panicked in the face of an incoming premier
In part, Canada and all the rest of the anti-ISIL coalition members helped create the mess in the first place, and as a result we now “own it.” Walking away is an easy but certainly not honourable option. Chris Kilford
How shocking it must have been to find that a sitting premier, at the height of his powers, ... was somehow unable to deliver for them.
enjoying the inevitable honeymoon with the voters. Not at all. They had merely realized that now was not the time to oppose. Now was the time for all good Albertans, or certainly all conservative Albertans, to come to the aid of the party. Even after her aides reportedly shouted at her, like kids in a movie theatre, “Don’t do it — it’s a trap!” Smith resolutely went ahead and did it, smiling the smile of the innocent.
That smile remained, a little fixed perhaps, but still there, through Thursday’s budget speech, wherein it was revealed that, contrary to all of the broad hints and deep sighs the premier had been letting slip before the budget — and before suborning the Wildrosers to his side — about tough decisions and Ralph Klein-style cuts, the government would not be cutting spending, or not very much, but instead would be raising taxes — rather a lot, in fact.
There was even a smile, or something resembling it, two days later, when she learned she would not be a cabinet minister, indeed would not even be a candidate in the next election, the members of the Highwood Progressive Conservative riding association having voted otherwise. Two others of the Wildrose Nine met the same fate on the same night. Three others, perhaps sensing which way the wind was blowing, had already announced they would not seek the nomination.
Yet hadn’t the premier agreed, in that written accord he’d signed to secure their souls — er, their co-operation, to publicly endorse the Wild rubes as his preferred candidates in their ridings, “in the name of reconciliation”? Hadn’t he offered them the assurance that, should anyone be so foolish as to challenge them for the nominations, “there will be a call reminding them of the premier’s endorsement.” How shocking it must have been to find that a sitting premier, at the height of his powers, in a party that he has almost single-handedly rescued from oblivion, mere days before a probable election call, was somehow unable to deliver for them. After all, they’d delivered for — oh.
I am tempted to congratulate Prentice for his Mephistophelean cunning, not only more or less destroying the Wildrose party at one blow but also, months later, disposing of the murder weapons. But really, it doesn’t seem to have been that hard.