Danielle Smith wins race to lead Wildrose Alliance Party

Danielle Smith has won a race to lead the Wildrose Alliance Party, a right-wing rival to Alberta’s long-serving Progressive Conservative government.

The Wildrose Alliance has been attracting a lot of attention in Alberta recently after polls showed the upstart fringe party is bleeding support away from the Tories and emerging as the province's second-place choice to form a government.

Ms. Smith, a 38-year-old fiscal conservative and former media commentator, beat out Mark Dyrholm. A former Reform party organizer and social conservative, he complained bitterly during the leadership race that Ms. Smith was too socially liberal to lead the Wildrose Alliance because of her support for gay marriage and pro-choice abortion stance.

While Ms. Smith may be new to provincial politics, she has already gained the support of Alberta's conservative elite, including Tom Flanagan, the University of Calgary political scientist who helped to groom Stephen Harper for the Prime Minister's Office. Her campaign also received help from Rob Griffith, a well-known Harper campaign organizer.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/danielle-smith-wins-race-to-lead-wildrose-alliance-party/article1327999/

So Manitoba is probably next and then Charest has to watch out. The machine is coming.

I don't like his slimy neo-liberal ass any better than most of you, but if he survived the challenges his leadership faced in 2004 - 2005 (where he was so unpopular that even Anglophones were giving him a net disapproval, something that a Liberal Premier had not faced since Bourassa's fall from Anglophone grace and the rise of the Equality Party in the late-1980s), he can hold on to whatever whatever right now.

As for the Manitoba "NDP", fuck them. They're no progressives and are barely better than Tories. It's funny that the NDP was so quick to disaffiliate its Quebec wing for being too left wing but lets neo-liberals take over provincial branches at will.

Now let's address Smith's rise to the leadership of the Wildrose Alliance; I'll admit that I don't follow the party quickly and wasn't even aware of the leadership race until my prof brought it up as class was ending earlier this afternoon. I looked to the girl behind me and referred to her as "Sarah Palin North", causing her to laugh hysterically.

We spent the next 30 minutes talking about a number of topics not far from our classroom.

Anyways, I looked up the race on <Bush>the Google</Bush> and it turns out that while her blade is sharper than Mike the Knife, she's a social liberal who is pro-choice and supportive of same-sex marriage.

Could American-style minarchist libertarianism become Alberta's dominant ideology?

i.e - her purported social libertarian outlook on abortion and same sex marriage. I assume she will toss that aside if she thinks it will lead to electoral success, though.

Personally, I think there is a lot of oil company money behind WAP. The oil industry is using them to threaten the Conservative Party, after the (admittedly small) changes in oil royalties that Stelmach brought in. Once Stelmach finishes the cave-in on that issue, the oil industry will probably withdraw their financial support from WAP.

That will probably be the end of WAP, but you never know. The oil industry may prefer a whole new party to come to power. It has the advantage of the appearance of democracy and of bringing in a group who are more completely beholden to the industry.

Saw the hype that was going on this week-end then you would expect to see her as Harper's right hand person. They have been listed as having more support than the Liberal Provincial party.

They want to change quite a few things, health care being one. But they are not publicly saying what they want.

Interesting times we live in. And they are not in books and lectures.