The Wildrose Advantage is, of course, Leader Danielle Smith, the 40-year-old former broadcaster and business lobbyist. Reading from a prepared speech last Tuesday in Olds, candidate Bruce Rowe called Smith the party's "dynamic assetî and stressed the word "sheî in his next lines: "You may have heard of her Ö She believes it's time for change. She has brought focus on the real issues of concern to Albertans. She has reminded us all what it means to be a true conservative.î
Wildrose is pinning its hopes in the upcoming provincial election on Smith's appeal to the voters. She's telegenic and peddles nostalgia for the "good old daysî with a persuasive twang. But as Smith herself said about Premier Alison Redford, "Changing one person, the person at the top, is not real change. It's cosmetic change.î
If Smith is the party's advantage, and her largely unknown team is its disadvantage, then there isn't going to be much depth to draw the voters to Wildrose on election day. If, like Rowe, the candidates and leader are not even in sync on key issues, such as energy deregulation and subsidizing local Greyhound service (see story in Gazette), the effectiveness of the party as an agent of "grassroots changeî has to be seriously questioned.
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Following last week's editorial, "Wildrose shows it's not ready for prime time,î the party's communications coordinator, Brock Harrison, called to "clarifyî the Wildrose position.
The fact that Chinook's Edge School Division trustees paid for their own tickets when they attended a premier's dinner in 2010 "means they obeyed the law and that's fine,î Harrison said. The party, he said, was only going after the PCs for illegally soliciting donations from local government bodies.
That distinction was not made in the party's press releases, I pointed out, and read Harrison one of their headlines, "PCs actively solicit illegal donations at premier's dinners.î
"You refer to illegal donations throughout and you're painting everyone with the same brush. The headline should have read, ëPCs illegally solicit donations for premier's dinners,' if that's what you're saying.î
"I'll give you that,î Harrison said.
Anyway, it should come as a great relief to the school trustees involved to learn that the Wildrose Party recognizes "they obeyed the law and that's fine.î
Interestingly, Harrison didn't take issue with my description of Wildrose as "a sleeper party for the oilpatch ñ a B team to be activated if the ruling Tories step out of line again.î
But why quibble over the obvious?
