One More Epicycle

One the one hand, I was surprised by this:

Flanked by the man whose shadow he will now attempt to step out of, Alberta’s Premier-designate Ed Stelmach made his first speech as the province’s leader early Sunday morning following his surprise victory.

Oh, well. He’s far too establishment for my tastes, and this may lead to a fragmentation of the party. This could be a very good thing: parties in power tend to become less conservative over time, and more interested in Liberal-style patronage and shady investments and buying off the voters with their own money, and I think the long PC reign contributed to its recent unimpressive performance. Having a real conservative party to compete with would be good for all concerned. (Remember, kids: Ralph Klein isn’t a conservative, whatever nonsense you’ve been fed by Ontario newspapers.)

On the other hand, I’m entirely unsurprised by this (hat-tip Reynolds):

Scientists at the U.K.’s Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, west of London, have traced the polonium 210 found in London to a nuclear power plant in Russia, the capital’s Evening Standard newspaper reported today. Officials at the establishment didn’t return calls.

Although, to be fair, in the early phases of investigations there tend to be false positives on all sorts of tests, and associated inflated claims of both precision and accuracy in the analysis process. Finger-pointing like this has a habit of being quietly walked back later when no one’s looking, and in this case the finger hasn’t even been officially pointed, so for all we know someone got a glimpse of a list of samples they were comparing it to and decided to call up his cousin at the Evening Standard with a “scoop”.

Still.. I think I’ll call it a draw.

Ted Morton, our preferred candidate in the race for leadership of the Alberta PC party, came in a strong second on the first ballot. He still has an excellent chance to win.

Note that the second ballot is the final one: it’s a three-candidate rank-preference ballot, and if no one has more than 50% of the number one rankings, then the third candidate is scratched. It seems to me likely that most of the third-candidate (Stelmach) voters will put Morton in second. The Politic has an interesting graph with the results broken down by riding, which meshes quite nicely with my memories of the lay of the political land, and some intelligent commentary on both sides of the issue.

I should say that I agree with Lorne Gunter’s comments on Dinning: he’d probably be passably fine as a premier, though not so distinctively Albertan, and is currently suffering from front-runner syndrome. But Albertans don’t have to settle for hopes of adequacy, and why miss the chance to annoy Globe and Mail readers at the same time?

I hope that a Morton administration would find a place for Dinning somewhere, though, he has proven competence.

BTW, the title comes from Morton’s country campaign theme song. No, I’m not kidding; give it a listen.

Right now I’m missing home a lot..

Although I’ve been away from Alberta in distance for some time — and now even more so, being in London — she’s never far from my thoughts.

[Ed: Do you have the same kind of feelings for Canada?

DSM: No comment.

Ed: Oh, come on. You can do better than that.

DSM: Fine. My love for Canada is like a man's for his father, a love of respectful affection. My love for Alberta is like a man's for his wife, a crazy-drunk love that's forever amazed anything in all Creation could be so beautiful.

Ed: So why are you half a world away, then?

DSM: ...]

.. anyhow, for all those of you who have been waiting in breathless anticipation, I’ve made my decision. It wasn’t too hard.

I’m endorsing Ted Morton for the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative party, and therefore for the premiership.

Every now and then I tried to explain Western politics to friends in Ontario, and they often got stuck at the point where I explained that there was a considerable groundswell of opposition to the Klein Conservatives.. from the right. By the end, many of us thought his goverment grew sloppy and lazy and nontransparent, and indulged in the same loose spending we deplored when other parties were engaging in it. “What? Lots of Albertans think Klein is too liberal?!“

In part this difficulty is due to a common misconception: Ralph Klein is not a conservative. Not in the sense that Edmund Burke is a conservative, not in the sense that WFB is a conservative, not even in the senses that Preston Manning or Stephen Harper are conservative. Klein is an idiosyncratic populist, in a conservative province. (I think I owe this formulation, or something like it, to one of the old Alberta Report writers, and usually when I remember a phrase it’s from Cosh. Genius steals, etc.)

Now I like Ralph a lot — he’s just so Ralph — but his ideological commitments to conservative principles are weak. He’s grown used to some of them over time, having seen them work, but a comparison of his record as mayor of Calgary to his record as provincial premier shows that he’s undergone, er, significant development of his policy ideas over the years. And when times were very good, like recently, and he could engage in unconservative actions without threatening the budgetary legacy he’d earned, he seized the chance.

Reminds me of a popular bumper sticker back home during the early ’90s. I can’t remember the precise wording, but (cleaned up somewhat for public viewing) it went something like this: “Lord, please send another boom: I promise not to [waste it all on beer] this time.” The boom came, and so should the fiscal restraint.

Ted Morton understands this. He’s been fighting the good fight for ages, even when it was unpopular, with consistent principle and painfully sharp clarity. If there were any justice, he’d be a Senator right now, but he can probably accomplish a lot more as a premier. Real reform, boldly and thoughtfully implemented.

Here’s hoping he gets the opportunity.

Stephen Taylor has an interview with Morton which is worth a listen.

[This message entirely unsponsored by the Morton campaign, more's the pity.]