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When change happens in Alberta provincial politics, it is abrupt, decisive...
Albertans have only changed their provincial governing party three times: 1921, 1935 and 1971. After entering confederation as a province in 1905 (sort of… Alberta, like the other Prairie Provinces...
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Score week one for Wildrose
The 2012 Alberta election campaign opened with a round of public opinion polls indicating that the governing PCs and the upstart Wildrose began the contest locked in a struggle for first. This was a...
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Halfway to regime change: Part I – How frightening is this?
Given Wildrose momentum in the 2012 Alberta election contest, it was only a matter of time before at least one of their opponents began a fear campaign aimed at demonizing the party, its leader, and by...
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Halfway to regime change: Part II – Patterns of seismic shifts in Alberta...
About 20 years ago a very wise professor told me that political science isn’t as much about predicting the future as it is about reconstructing the past. I took him to mean that because no one can...
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Halfway to regime change: Part III – Campaign dynamics give nod to Wildrose
Aside from polling data, election analysts use other indicators to judge how any particular campaign is developing. We know that the governing party will have a track record to defend and assume that...
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Wildrose: Libertarian-conservatism and the populist trap
Back sometime in 2003, I was invited to participate in a debate about the future of conservatism and the newly created Conservative Party of Canada. My interlocutor was, and has been since, the...
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Fear and loathing at the end of the 2012 campaign trail
Five hundred years ago Machiavelli posed and then answered the question as to whether it is better to be loved than feared. While it is best to be both, he wrote, because that is difficult, when one...
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Ellis: Looking at leadership style as candidates make pitches in southern...
Given that the PC party of Alberta is not planning on holding any public leadership forums or province-wide TV or radio events prior to the first vote in September, one of the few opportunities members...
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Just what was Ric McIver’s campaign thinking by having him attend March for...
This morning I read with interest the ample coverage of Ric McIver’s sojourn into the abyss of social conservatism. After my initial reaction – ‘Yikes!’ – faded, I could only shake my head in amazement...
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Slowly, incrementally, conservatively… we are starting to see some policy...
Just when you think it’s safe to start talking a little policy on the Alberta PC leadership campaign trail, we were revisited by the ghost of the premier past’s spending habits and the requisite...
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How long will Alberta PC caucus put up with Prentice’s scoldings?
Don Braid’s column from last week about Jim Prentice’s relentless ‘scolding’ of the Alberta PC government caught the attention of the Alberta Primetime producers this week leading to a discussion about...
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Is it too late to save the Alberta PCs from themselves and their culture of...
Back in June I commented in this space about how I had dutifully renewed my Alberta PC membership, as I occasionally do with several provincial and federal parties, for the express purpose of casting a...
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Someone should tell Jim Prentice it isn’t 1983 anymore
Jim Prentice is correct about one thing: large, well-financed, professionally staffed (read elitist) leadership campaigns have been buying membership for potential voters for decades. But most of us...
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Ellis: Signs of sober reality as parties pick their targets
In the lead up to today’s widely anticipated Alberta provincial election call, it has been interesting to note the heavy dose of realism that has infused most of the parties’ campaigns. Undoubtedly,...
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Ellis: The rise and fall of the ‘Jim Prentice-as-saviour’ narrative
As the Alberta election campaign reaches its halfway point, and with the leaders debate just around the corner, it is interesting to note that the “Jim Prentice as saviour” (of the PC party, the...
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Ellis: Wildrose trying to keep its message simple
There is a great deal to be said for learning from experience. To date, it would appear that Wildrose leader Brian Jean is an exceptional student. He and his team have clearly learned from their...
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Ellis: Expect to hear 'Unite the Right' after the election
How utterly ironic that on the final days of the 2015 campaign, less than five months after Jim Prentice and Danielle Smith attempted to unite Alberta’s right by way of the most unprecedented means, we...
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