Is the increasingly bitter fight between Alberta's government and the province's physicians just about money? It's said here it’s more about who gets to control the health care system.

If you need evidence for this assertion, look no further than the fact just two and a half months ago Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne said he was going to impose a pay deal on the docs that would have seen their salaries keep on rising.

Premier Alison Redford is now traipsing around the province explaining that these same doctors are being paid too much -- why, they get 20 to 29 per cent more than their counterparts anywhere else in Canada!

Here in Alberta's icy capital, the winter of 2012 is starting to feel like the summer of '73.

If you're an Alberta Progressive Conservative, this is not a good thing.

Let me explain. In the spring and summer of 1972, Richard Nixon, a Republican, was running for re-election as president of the United States.

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested in the wee hours breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in Washington.

On Nov. 11, 1972, Nixon was re-elected by a crushing landslide that swept away his peacenik Democratic opponent, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota. McGovern died at 90 in Sioux Falls, S.D., just 40 days ago.

Sitting atop an unexpectedly huge bubble of public support with only three weeks to go before Alberta's provincial election, the tough and disciplined Wildrose Party campaign team's No. 1 objective is now to ensure no one sticks in pin in it in the short time remaining.

Since they themselves did not predict the heights to which Wildrose support was going to soar or the popular appeal of Leader Danielle Smith -- even more polls are about to suggest she could capture a majority government on April 23 -- they have two serious problems that could pop their balloon:

With election fever gripping the province and the far-right Wildrose Party facing the bleak prospect of a do-or-die election campaign from a weaker position than it has faced since soon after its generously financed and publicized creation, a real rift on Alberta's historically unified conservative right is opening up.

Whether the divide grows bitter and deep enough to become a meaningful advantage to more progressive Alberta political parties remains to be seen. Ironically, for that to happen, centrist parties like the New Democrats and the Alberta Liberals need to wish the Wildrose Party a modest degree of success in 2012.