[Makarov]

Originally Posted by c.t.ner

I have a feeling that this may come up in the online Leaders debate tomorrow at noon. The timing of the Liberal sponsored toryorwildrose.com site, will give Shermann an opening to attempt to pull people disappointed with the Wildrose Candidate List and "voting strategically" back to the Liberals.

To be honest, I don't know how someone would deal with that as newly elected leader. Morton is a long established PC and was vying for the leadership of the party, as a new leader you can't just start cleaning house on elected MLAs for something that Stelmach failed to properly deal with at the time. (That being said, there was objection in the PC ranks when Morton introduced his bill)

My problem with the Wildrose having canadiates such as Leech, Huntsberger and Byfield is that they had a clean slate as a party. It was a new party and it was decided that these guys were the best candidates for their riding, they had an opportunity to do some strong vetting on their slate of candidates with questionable backgrounds, but didn't.

Again, I think this pulls back to the whole split between the Conservative base in Alberta, with Red Tories (more socially progressive) staying with the PCs and Blue Tories (socially conservative) shifting towards the Wildrose.

I agree. I think that most of the social conservative dinosaurs moved over to the WRP. I wish that Morton had as well. And I also agree that it will be difficult for Redford to criticize a politically powerful and connected member of her own party like Morton. But, in my view, if she is confronted with it, she simply has to say something. I don't think she has to be brutally honest (i.e., call Morton the homophobic bigot that he no doubt is), but she has to say that those views are not consistent with her views or with the policies and values of her party.