About the only thing that's really clear about the tortured saga of the $350-millionish Royal Alberta Museum is that hardly anybody understands how the supposed key to Edmonton's desperately needed downtown renewal could be promised, then jerked away in a matter of weeks.

That said, two conclusions are inescapable:

1)    The major players from all three secretive Conservative governments that have had a hand in this fiasco (the Ed Stelmach provincial government, the Alison Redford provincial government and the Stephen Harper federal government) are likely lying to us about it.

2)    Edmonton and its taxpayers are consistently taken for granted and treated with contempt by Conservatives of all stripes.

Any normal province as poorly served by its Members of Parliament as is Alberta would surely turn the deadwood out.

But then, in any normal province a candidate as promising as the energetic Ruth Kelly would be a cinch to beat an underperformer like Edmonton-Spruce Grove Conservative MP and federal Labour Minister Rona Ambrose.

When the Edmonton-Strathcona riding once held by former Conservative high-flyer Rahim Jaffer unexpectedly fell to the New Democratic Party last October, it was pretty clear the federal Conservatives would pull out all stops to get it back next time.