As the political gong show continued yesterday in Edmonton, it was becoming increasingly apparent Premier Alison Redford is the Paul Martin of Alberta.

Don't scoff at this suggestion! Alert readers will recall that Martin was the last Liberal Prime Minister of Canada, the fellow whose idea of dealing with a scandal was setting up that Royal Commission led by Justice John Gomery to "get to the bottom" of things.

Well, we all know how that ended!

Despite an amusing Pierre Poutine moment before it started, the Wildrose Party's one-day annual general meeting in Edmonton yesterday seems to have gone swimmingly for Leader Danielle Smith, whose key messages were transmitted uncritically by media and apparently accepted in a similar spirit by members.

Reading between the lines of the media coverage, Smith's three main points to her right-wing supporters were as follows:

1)    Bozo eruptions by bad candidates, not Wildrose policies, caused the party's election loss on April 23

2)    Nothing substantive in the Wildrose economic agenda needs to change, but the party may have to be sneakier about some of its members' social conservative views

And so it begins: Rob Anderson, an ambitious social-conservative in the Wildrose Opposition's shadow Alberta cabinet has publicly fired a rocket at his leader after she changed her tune on whether a Wildrose government would allow public funding of gender-reassignment surgery.

Anderson, the party's House Leader says there's no way Danielle Smith can just up and change the party's fundamental policies, even if she is the leader. He promised a "robust discussion" at the next party annual general meeting.

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Can it be less than two years since Ted Morton, then Alberta's steely-eyed finance minister and hard-right fiscal hawk, was poised to become premier himself?