Tit for Taft.

[allhatnocattle]

For the last 4yr.s I've lived in a Liberal riding. Nothing changed for me last night. Former local radio celeb, Dave Taylor is still my MLA. Unfortunately, neither Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were on the ballot, a disappointment for many, I'm sure. Dave Taylor handily beat the well financed PC Candidate, former CNN reporter Art "scud-stud"

Comments

[tridus]

Not being from Alberta, I have a hard time understanding how one party can stay in power this long without becoming so arrogant and complacent that they can't govern (and thus get voted out).

Maybe you can help me out here, how have the PCs earned this kind of long term support?

[penlessej]

The PC Party was very arrogant and complacent under Klein. I think that with Steady Eddy the PCs had a bit of a wake up call and there was even talk of a major shake up in the legislature. Sadly Taft ran a piss poor campaign and if you watched his concession speech you can really see the mood of the Liberals afterwards.

[allhatnocattle]

I'm from Toronto myself, so I can't speak for days of yore

[mijopo]

Thanks for that erudite characterization of the Albertan people, but I think it's bullshit. It's not that Albertans are a bunch of Larry the Cable guy hicks. At least not much more or less than Ontario is comprised of Larry the Cable guy hicks. The reason asshats like Ralph Klein and company can keep winning in Alberta is not because they appreciate that he's such a dick, it's because Alberta has been awash with money for a long f--in time. Any moron or gang of morons can keep winning in those conditions. If the economy is strong, people are happy and won't look for change and if it isn't, they will. It's a pretty simple political formula: Latch on to a political party that's in power in a region awash with natural resource. Stay with that party. If you can do the latching on part, the rest is simple.

[allhatnocattle]

Don't bullshit me. The oil sands was a non-issue until 1995. That's when the technology finally came on line to make it profitable. When Klein first became Premier the province was awash in debt. Drastic change was the only way out. Cutting back on service wasn't an easy experience. Any long-standing Albertan will tell you the difficulty we had. What? You don't remember $15/barrel oil?

Sure there's been complacency in this and the 2004 and 2000 elections because the economy's been good. But that doesn't explain the history before that.

[mijopo]

yeah, there was a brief blip of debt when the oil revenue dropped for a while. Don't you remember? Don Getty lost his seat when people started to worry that the gravy train was slowing down. But for almost all of the Tories long run, Alberta has been a very very wealthy province.

[allhatnocattle]

I usually refrain from mentioning the NEP... a brief blip that lasted 2 decades through Getty, Lougheed and into the start of Klein's era.

[mijopo]

yeah, those were some tough times for Alberta, the Heritage fund could only accumulate tens of billions instead of hundreds.

[allhatnocattle]

Are you making this up? Conventional oil became a small revenue source, as it would remain today if not for the spike in commodities.

[tridus]

I see, thanks for the info.