[Kjesse]

Anyone following this?

Since the NHL draft was so slow, and given that the Flames weren't involved tonight, I also streamed the feed for Danielle's speech while the draft was on. I watched most of her speech, but it was also longer than I expected and I found that as time went on her phrases sounded too much like I have heard before for my liking.

I was fairly excited about her leadership, and I'm not blaming her speech entirely for my new found lack of enthusiasm, but the longer I watched her speech tonight the more I thought that the debate about Alberta's future is not about what direction the province should go, but instead is about which individual will become the Premier, and which group of alleged 'right wingers' controls Alberta after next election. She said exactly what I would expect a candidate for the leadership of the Alberta PC's to say. In other words, its splitting hairs --- its about control --- not ideology, political philosophy, but instead, a revolt against an incompetent Premier.

Anyway, I'll take Danielle Smith as my Premier over Ed Stelmach in a heartbeat. But Ed has been forced to correct his ways due to both public outcry and internal pressure, which lessens the impact of a new party. I also expect Ed will not lead the PCs into the next election, and if so the Wildrose will have a real problem on its hands as a result.

Imagine an electoral contest between Danille Smith and the Wildrose vs. Ted Morton and PCs. In that contest Smith actually looks more socially liberal (which I prefer) while Morton has fiscal conservatism as his ace in the hole, even compared to Smith.

Wildrose has a long road ahead of it. The policies that result from this weekend's convention will go a long way toward placing them as either a real alternative to PC's, or leave them as just a clone of the PCs with a better leader... and that advantage will only prevail until Stelmach is canned.