Quote:
Originally Posted by kn
The Alberta Dividend, direct democracy initiatives, and a general belief that people at the grassroots level are better suited to manage local affairs than a cadre of government elites would lend credence that there are populist elements among the Party, certainly more than any of the other alternatives. If it doesn't have populist elements, how would you characterize the Party? Do you think the forces that enabled the Reform Party to form simply vanished in the intervening years?
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Let's be clear: the Alberta Dividend is silly pandering to Dave-Rutherford conservatives who buy the whole "I know what to do with my money better than the government" line. The Tories did the same thing not too many years back, and for the exact same reason: to buy your vote. I'm not going to pretend my vote isn't for sale, but it costs more than an iPad.
Direct democracy initiatives? Talk to me when the Wild Rose Alliance proposes meaningful electoral reform in Alberta. Not this goofy straw poll for Senators that we run.
The rest is just sophistry. This "cadre of government elites" are the
very people who make up the leadership of the Wild Rose Alliance. Your Rod Loves and Tom Flanagans and so on--a murderer's row of intellectual poverty and dogmatic faith in the widely-discredited economics of Milton Friedman.
This is the SAME group that ran on a "change" agenda in the early 90s. Even their
ideas are the same (the "Alberta Dividend" is a particularly egregious retread of an old tory standby).
So no, they're not "populists." The Wild Rose Alliance represents
total continuity with the conservative elite in this province--their "grassroots" message is just a sop to the
rhetoric of populism that resonates so well with the "Als" of this world. But
real populism is a distant memory; I suppose it died with William Jennings Bryan.
Vote for them if you want; just don't be surprised when what you get is more of the same.