It is certainly not wedding bells that are breaking up the old Stephen Harper gang. Can you imagine Jason Kenney—Harper’s minister of everything—answering to the call of the West? It seems he is buckling on his six-guns and ambling west to have a shoot-out with Miss Rachel to decide who rules the Edmonton Legislature.
To do this, our last of the Bobbsey Twins is going to have to unite the provincial right and that is no easy task. The last people to try that were quite unceremoniously drummed out of Alberta politics last year.
And the best of luck to Mr. Kenney in convincing Wildrose Leader Brian Jean that he should join the Alberta provincial Conservatives. And frankly when you compare the provincial Conservatives to the Wildrose people, it only seems to be a question of which is more strident.
But getting the Conservatives and Wildrose to make nice with each other is another matter. It took the strong hand of Stephen Harper to get the Reform/Alliance crowd to work with the remnants of the Conservative Party of Canada. Both realized that they would be forever shut out in Ottawa if they did not get together. Kenney has to convince both sides in Alberta that New Democrat Rachel Notley will be in for a long run as premier if they do not get together.
If we were a betting person (which we are), we would suggest that Kenney does not have it in him. Kenney works best behind the scenes. He is no leader. He knows how to manipulate but even after all those years watching Harper, he does not know how to do it from the front of the room.
And that is a fault that has been so glaringly obvious for many years.
It must be a lesson that most effective political apparatchiks have to learn the hard way. When you lead from the front, you have to turn your back on your troops. Each of those troops has his or her own motivation and you never know when jealousy, envy or ambition will supplant loyalty. You never know their limits until you feel the knives in your back.
As minister of everything for Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney was able to use Harper’s strength to accomplish his objectives. Without him, Kenney is too soft a target. A fat and forty bachelor has to battle questions of his sexuality among strongly religious followers when he hardly needs the distractions.
It will be interesting to see how he does.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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