Candidates for the Progressive Conservative leadership will pay a $50,000 entry fee to help defray the party's debt of nearly $1 million.
What's right with this picture?
What's wrong is the blind pride of the tattered party to ask for it and the blinder pride of candidates who will fork it over.
Alberta's three previous political dynasties ended in very different circumstances, so they don't offer yardsticks to help determine if it is over for the Conservative era.
Allegations of a sex scandal, and a sensational trial in which the aggrieved father of the alleged victim sought compensation from the premier he claimed seduced his daughter, ended the Liberal regime after 16 years.
The political impact of the Great Depression brought down the United Farmers of Alberta after 15 years atop the political heap.
The Social Credit Party failed to keep up with the political impacts of urbanization and secularization and fell from power after 35 years.
The only common denominator in each was the emergence of a political movement that spoke a better case than the government for the majority of Albertans.
The United Farmers were the closest thing that Alberta ever had to a non-partisan government that rejected party divisions of democracy.
The Social Credit movement brought hope to lives ruined by the depression.
Peter Lougheed's Alberta brand of conservatism brought pride and dynamism to the hustle and bustle of the late 20th century.
Granted that the $50,000 entry fee will be a fraction of the cost of a successful leadership bid, but it is begging to ask for it.
No politically astute person need accept these expensive terms.
There are four men now pondering the race –- cabinet ministers Doug Horner, Ken Hughes and Tom Lukasuk, and former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel.
In the 1936 Social Credit sweep a popular line from William Aberhart's campaign stump speech was “if you haven't suffered enough (with the UFA government) it is your God-given right to suffer some more.”
In 2016, 80 years later, Albertans will have the same choice.
