‘Tis late and the CBC’s pancake makeup weighs heavy on your blogger’s face. As all the world must surely know by now, Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s hole card turned out to be an ace yesterday and Alberta’s 41-year Progressive Conservative dynasty will live a little longer, perhaps a lot longer.
So today there is no joy in Mudville — whether that place is located in the town of Okotoks, site of the world’s largest glacial erratic, or at 24 Sussex Drive — for the Mighty Flanagan has struck out. You can almost hear the disgruntled Wildrosers chanting “45 years is enough!”
At least the good Dr. Tom Flanagan, hyperventilating neo-Con ideologue and author of the best-selling Harper’s Team, How I Created It All By Myself Without Any Help At All and Made That Little Twerp From Calgary West Into a Prime Minister, will have plenty of people to drown his sorrows with. They include the pollsters who intentionally or accidentally got it all so spectacularly wrong, the media pundits who spun their upstart Wildrose narrative for three years without reference to facts, to the blogosphere, which drank the media’s bathwater without so much as a gin chaser.
In these wee hours, though, we can merely hastily catalogue yesterday’s election losers and winners and leave the explanations and the more nuanced analysis to the morrow:
Loser No. 10: The Alberta Liberals
Winner No. 10: The Alberta New Democrats
Loser No. 9: Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman
Winner No. 9: Alberta New Democrat Leader Brian Mason
Loser No. 8: Private health care company executives
Winner No. 8: Alberta Health Services executives
Loser No. 7: Preston Manning
Winner No. 7: Peter Lougheed
Loser No. 6: Wildrose Campaign Manager Tom Flanagan
Winner No. 6: Progressive Conservative Campaign Manager Stephen Carter
Loser No. 5: Harper Conservatives
Winner No. 5: Red Tories
Loser No. 4: Ted Morton, the worst premier Alberta never had
Winner No. 4: Doug Horner, the best opposition leader Alberta never had
Loser No. 3: The Wildrose Party
Winner No. 3: The Progressive Conservative Party
Loser No. 2: Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith
Winner No. 2: Alberta Premier Alison Redford
And the No. 1 loser and the No. 1 winner are…
Loser No. 1: Alberta’s professional pollsters
Winner No. 1: There is no winner in this category
NOTE: Readers will have to forgive me for revising Winner and Loser No. 7, this morning upon rising, when I thought of a way better line! This happens when you’re posting items at 2 a.m.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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