Former Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith, campaigning to replace Jason Kenney as leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP), apparently thinks we should “Uber-fy public services,” let teachers set up their own one-room multi-grade school houses in their homes, and declare everyone aboard charter plane loads of anti-vaxx Albertans to be “diplomats” to avoid travel restrictions.
So she said, anyway, at a rally Monday, July 11 in the Calgary-area city of Airdrie, recorded by someone in the audience and posted as snippets to Twitter by The Breakdown, an Alberta political podcast.
The clips are short, and their sound quality is poor. The print summaries published by The Breakdown are not strictly accurate in every case, but they are true to her message.
Whatever the full context of her remarks was, you can hear what she said in that gloriously overconfident Danielle Smith voice that so many sensible Albertans have come to deeply distrust over the years.
So what’s going on?
Maybe Smith was just talking to see what she was going to say.
She’s been known to do that, blithely confident she’s the smartest person in the room and can babble her way out of any gaffe.
But three times in one night?
Readers will recall Ian Fleming’s famous adage. Said the creator of James Bond: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action!”
Perhaps, having been burned by her proximity to the Lake of Fire in 2012, a decade later Smith has decided to adopt the strategy of positioning herself on the extreme fringe of the Alberta conservative movement she seeks to lead.
This might seem crazy, but maybe it’s crazy like a fox.
The conventional wisdom at the time of the Lake of Fire incident that derailed the Wildrose campaign to the benefit of Alison Redford and her Progressive Conservatives was that Smith’s mistake was not immediately publicly condemning the social conservative candidate whose video consigning LBGTQ people eternity in the fires of Hell was revealed just before the 2012 general election.
Taking similarly wildly controversial positions on a number of issues now might seem counter intuitive, but a lot of fire has passed under the bridge in North American politics since then, especially since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United Sates in 2016.
And this sure sounds like Donald Trump’s strategy, doesn’t it?
To wit: If you’re the only one everybody’s talking about, you’re doing something right. It doesn’t matter what you’re saying, as long as it gets ’em talking!
It worked for Trump in 2016, and who’s to say it won’t work for Smith in 2022 and 2023?
Meanwhile, it sounds as if Smith has taken Rob Anderson on board as her campaign chair.
Readers will recall that Anderson was the MLA for Airdrie and Wildrose House Leader who was probably the first political casualty of Smith’s disastrous December 2014 decision to lead eight of her MLAs across the floor of the Legislature to join Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives.
At the time of the mass floor crossing, Anderson was widely and confidently predicted in the media and government circles to be in line for a senior position in Prentice’s cabinet. If that were true, though, the offer was quickly snatched back. He didn’t run in the 2015 election.
Anderson has also long been rumoured to have been involved in the negotiations for the floor-crossing – although that’s never been confirmed.
Talking to Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell on June 30, Ms. Smith looked back at 2014 and said, “I allowed myself to be surrounded by advisers and people who were out of touch.”
Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid, who wrote a column Wednesday suggesting Smith already has a lock on the UCP leadership race, identified Anderson last night in a tweet as Smith’s campaign chair.
That too has been rumoured but never before confirmed.
So does this mean she’s taking advice again from one of the same advisors she blamed for her worst political decision ever?
Got a name? Buy the domain!
Meanwhile, someone with a mean sense of humour has registered the domain name LeelaAheer.ca and linked it to a column by blogger Dave Cournoyer about troubles experienced in 2018 by UCP MLA Leela Aheer, who is now seeking the party’s leadership.
Just type LeelaAheer.ca into your favourite search engine and see what you get.
This is a pretty mean trick to play on Aheer, who was kicked out of cabinet by Jason Kenney for being too critical of his Sky Palace patio party last June.
It’s also an ironic trick to play on Cournoyer.
Alert readers will recall that in 2008, Cournoyer, then a university student, registered the name EdStelmach.ca and linked it to a Wikipedia story about Harry Strom, the last Social Credit premier of Alberta.
Readers were amused. Stelmach was not.
The premier sicced a lawyer named Tyler Shandro on the author of the Daveberta.ca blog, which Cournoyer still publishes. Eventually the matter was settled reasonably amicably.
“I don’t own the domain name, I swear,” Cournoyer tweeted last night.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
