Well it is official. Rather than trying to look within and change themselves to suit Albertans, the Alberta Liberal Party has resigned itself as a permanent opposition party.
This must be a quite the slap in the face to those loyal Liberal supporters who have worked their butts off in constituencies that Swann could consider unwinnable and abandon. What about the donors in those constituencies with limited Liberal support?
Most of all, what about the Liberal voters in these constituencies? As per usual, the Alberta Liberal Party continues to ignore the most important Albertans of all; those that vote. To outright alienate and abandon those voters who supported their own party is nothing less than unconscionable.
It certainly is quite an assumption to make that those former Liberal voters who will be set adrift electorally will vote for whatever “progressive” option Swann directs them to.
A Wildrose Alliance government is looking more likely by the day. Clearly Alberta’s Liberals are not ready to change themselves in order to become Alberta’s government in waiting and Albertans are ready for a new government.
Hey Cory,
I think the key word in the article you quoted is “may” – “may not run candidates in some long-shot ridings next election to maximize resources.” I think that the Grits try and make that commitment dependant on whether they can find a dance partner, or not.
And the safe bet is that they won’t. The NDP isn’t interested in cooperating with anyone – the hard-cores in that party are still holding onto fond memories of ’86, I guess, convinced they can claw back there again.
The WA isn’t likely to want to cooperate, either. They smell blood in the water and are likely to want to take a run at the Tories on their own. That makes sense. Besides that, there’s the Liberals’ (both real and imagined) baggage amongst a good number of grass-roots WA supporters — if just guilt by name-association.
That’d be a pretty clumsy policy tango, anyway.
But, really, all of that is pretty moot. This isn’t really news. The Alberta Liberals have steadily abandoned more and more ridings over the years, already, by running paper candidates and committing token resources – a few signs, and not much else – to those races. They ceased being a going concern outside the urban centres after Laurence Decore’s leadership, ceding more and more ridings for the Tories to take in a walk.
This announcement is just saying out loud what’s effectively been going on for a few elections. So, what?