Disaster warning

Rarely, if ever, do I post about fallout from a previous posting on this blog. There were some interesting questions posed in the comments section of "Ad-busters", though, that I want to address.

A couple of comments ask me how I rationalize my belief that a Liberal government would be disastrous for the Alberta economy.

Its pretty simple, really. They're an extraordinarily weak team.

One of the comments talks about a lack of business sense from the like of Hugh MacDonald, Harry Chase, David Swann et al. Bang on correct.

As an aside, I find no logic from the person who comments that we don't get much business sense from Ray Danyluk, Luke Ouellette, or Lyle Oberg. Ray Danyluk runs a large family farm (Liberals wouldn't know anything about that anyway) and i've already posted on this blog about the skills required to do that. Luke Ouellette has been a successful small businessman for most of his adult life. And Dr. Oberg, although we may have our differences, is no fool.

Anyway, back to the Liberals. Remember that these people are getting out-oppositioned by the 4-member caucus down the aisle. Their arguments are often weak and their grasp of parliamentary procedure, even among veteran MLAs, is pretty shaky.

The Liberals haven't recruited any serious star candidates. Moreover, they're having trouble recruiting candidates period. We're a little more than 2 weeks away from an election and they've barely filled half their slate. What is particularily telling for me are their perennial troubles in my hometown. For as much as they've been pimping themselves as potential victors of the Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo constituency, the residents of the area know better. The local Liberal association is in shambles, they have yet to find even a warm body to run as a candidate (nevermind someone people might consider voting for), and Kevin Taft still goes undetected at local functions ("Who's the annoying bald guy?")

They're weak and they're disorganized. Two reasons why no one takes them seriously. The reason I think they would lead to economic disaster stems from the aforementioned.

Albertans are a pretty pragmatic lot. That, I think, is how you can explain such a broad swath of support for PC Alberta over the years. The reason PC Alberta was able to overtake the Social Credit party in 1971 wasn't because we outflanked them on the right, but rather because we covered most of their own base but with a younger team.

The last and, dare I say, ONLY provincial Liberal leader to understand this was Laurence Decore. Were it not for Ralph and his electioneers also understanding this strategy in 1993, Decore would likely have become Premier. Since that time, the Liberals have drifted further and further away from the your average Albertan. The pragmatists have largely defected or given up altogether and their donor base has dried up.

Because of this, the Liberals have become a collection of left-wing Trudeau apologists. This is evident in their policy documents that promote public everything (auto insurance, child care, and so on). The kinds of policies that the Liberals promote (and the kinds of candidates they are now scraping the bottom of the barrel for) are not all that different from the policies and people that ruined British Columbia in the 1990s.

I've now seen first hand the damage done by leftist politics here in BC. Its not a fate i'd wish on any province in this great land, especially not my beloved Alberta.

THAT'S why I think the Liberals would spell economic disaster for Alberta.

Thankfully, the coming election should make that pretty clear to the voters.