Since Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach’s resignation last month, the right-wing Wildrose Alliance has been anxious to paint the Progressive Conservatives as a party that will never elect a “truly conservative” leader.
But because former finance minister Ted Morton is the only declared or undeclared candidate in the race to replace Stelmach who holds views as far to the right as those of Alliance Leader Danielle Smith, Wildrose strategists are for obvious reasons quite concerned about the possibility Morton could emerge as the winner, as could easily happen.
For one thing, this would make a lie out of their assertion real conservatives are never allowed lead the PCs. At least, since Morton is pretty obviously a “true conservative” according to their own measure of conservatism, it would force them to make the unlikely argument that the fiscally hawkish former professor is somehow just another limp-wristed tax-and-spend liberal. The only scrap of evidence they’ll have to back up this assertion is Morton’s momentary slip of the tongue about a sales tax.
Never mind that nowadays Morton appears to be making this very argument himself, telling the Calgary Herald that he is “somewhat in the middle” and asserting his love for the party’s willingness to tolerate Red Tories. This is all for show. Morton’s core supporters — and most of his potential supporters who have parked their votes elsewhere — know perfectly well where he stands.
Now, none of this would matter but for the peculiar Alberta political custom of non-Conservatives plunking down $5 each to join the Conservative party in large numbers whenever there is a leadership contest.
This habit arises from the long tradition in this province of electing governments from only one party for decades at a time, leading to the not unreasonable belief by many Albertans that a Tory leadership race is their only opportunity to influence the direction of the province. Just because there is a now serious political challenger in the field doesn’t mean this practice is going to fade away any time soon.
This creates a more serious problem for the Wildrose Alliance than simply the possibility many conservative Albertans would find the PC Party sufficiently conservative for their tastes under Morton’s leadership.
No, Alliance strategists rightly fear their new party’s core enthusiasts — disillusioned right-wing former Conservative voters almost to a man and woman — will flock back to the PCs if a fiscal hawk like Morton is chosen to replace Premier Stelmach.
So the Wildrose Alliance will try to persuade as many of its supporters as possible simply to stay the heck away from the Conservative contest.
However, knowing that some will be unable to resist the temptation to rejoin the Tories and vote, the Wildrose leadership is sure to try to persuade those supporters to vote for the weakest candidate from the Wildrose perspective, and, above all, not to vote for Morton.
As a result, the Wildrose Alliance is likely to try to convince its not-so-secret Fifth Column to vote for a Red Tory candidate like Dave Hancock, or if he’s not available, maybe Doug Horner, Alison Redford, or Gary Mar.
But whether or not the Wildrose Alliance can actually control these multiple-party voters could turn out to be a critical factor in the Tory leadership contest. Unfortunately for the Alliance, it seems unlikely for two reasons that this double-barrelled strategy can work.
First, since it’s considered normal behaviour out here in the New West to belong to more than one party at the same time, it seems unlikely the Wildrose Alliance can persuade as many of its supporters as it would like to refrain from “Torying up” one more time.
Second, because once these fair-weather Wildrosers have yielded to the temptation to go back and vote for a Conservative candidate, they will simply be unable to prevent themselves from marking their ballot for the guy who thinks just like they do.
Yeah, they might plan to vote for Doug, Alison or Gary, but alone with their consciences, they will be powerless to stay their own hand! They’ll vote for Morton.
The smart money says the Wildrose Alliance’s leaders can neither keep most of their ex-Tory supporters from rejoining the Conservatives come leadership time, or from voting for Morton when the rubber hits the road.
If Morton wins the Conservative race thanks to supporters who slipped in from the Wildrose ranks, the Alliance will find itself on the proverbial horns of a dilemma.
The Wildrose Alliance can hardly run to the right of Morton without scaring the hell out of more moderate voters they’re counting on to pay attention to Ms. Smith’s congenial manner, not her far-right views.
But if they try to run to the left of him, they’ll drive their core supporters back to the Conservatives under Morton
The Wildrose Alliance has some capable and clever tacticians in its camp. But wiggling out of a situation like that would present them with an unenviable challenge.
From Morton’s point of view, his problem is that he may not be able to win the leadership without wooing back the Wildrosers who left the Conservative Party in disgust and still view it with mistrust.
If he can persuade them to rejoin, however, his chances are pretty good of getting their votes.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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