The new and unsurprising leader of the Alberta Conservatives is taking a trip to nowhere. He tells Albertans he is there to unite the right but there are two rights and those two rights do not necessarily make a new right or even a better right. And neither of the possible leaders, Jason Kenney or Brian Jean, are worthy of taking Alberta anywhere.
Nor does either have a slam dunk case to get chosen leader of a combined right. There was nothing new about Jason Kenney’s effort to win the Conservative Party leadership to enable him to dissolve the party. It was the same old Alberta-centric hokum that Alberta knows best—wrapping up carbon taxes and deficits and the new Democrats and disposing of them.
Frankly neither Jason Kenney nor Brian Jean bring anything to the table. Neither is a leader. They bring no new ideas, charisma or following to the job. Jason Kenney was nothing more than a ‘Yes-man’ for Stephen Harper. Brian Jean’s success is as a good constituency M.P. and M.L.A. They are henchman and ward healer.
The scary part is that they are both extremists. Jason Kenney is an anti-abortion ideologue on the extreme of the religious right. Brian Jean is on the far right as an economic extremist. Neither felt at home in Ottawa going along with Stephen Harper’s middle ground conservatism of the Conservative minority governments.
What Brian Jean knows and Jason Kenney does not seem to understand is that a race between the two of them for the leadership of the Wildrose and some party-to-be-named-later is going to be for a party dominated by Wildrose. It will be no centre-right party. It will be drained of many of the progressives who will be trucking over to the revived Liberals and the New Democrats. Jason Kenney has already demonstrated his suffrage of women in politics in the treatment of the two women in the Conservative leadership.
Two years ago, Alberta was bloody lucky that there was a viable party available to help save the province from itself. While the voters will deny it, Notley has taken herself and her party to the limits of catering to voters who seemed to have no understanding of the economic mess the province had created. Alberta has been in living high off the hog of resources for too long.
The truth is, Jason Kenney and Brian Jean are pitching a pipe dream.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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