Well. As the saying goes, "politics makes for strange bed fellows".
And today, we see the so-called bastion of conservatism, the PC Party of Alberta, getting an effective "thumps up" from Big City Liberal in Toronto, Ontario - commenting on the recent polls showing that the gains of the Wild Rose Alliance have been lost since the announcement of the leadership change.
My response?
Good news, for you BCL, because the Alberta Tories would be considered quite left of the B.C. Liberals.. and would be very comfortable sharing a bed with Dalton McGuinty.
Good news for "conservative" Albertans? Not so much.
The bottom line is that the Liberal Party of Alberta, who has toyed for years about changing their name - doesn't realize that it's already happened.
They didn't exactly change their name - but their members slowly, over time, became the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.
It's a funny thing - because I voted for Turner, Chretien and Martin - so I'm no hard-core Tory -but after working with the PC party for years, I've become very uncomfortable with the idea of a government who pretends to be one thing and then does something completely different.
I guess, the bottom line, is the party lacks integrity.
Right now - the leading candidate is Gary Mar. A man who abused his position by handing out an untendered contract to a former aid who was never asked to produce any evidence that he actually did any work. He collected the money, but gave nothing back to show why.
And as a result, Gary was sort of shuffled off to a plum post in Washington, D.C., only to come back now like nothing ever happened.
It's pretty disconcerting, I think.
Though, unfortunately, not very surprising. Oil prices are up, as is the price of real estate in Calgary - and the real truth is most voters in Alberta are happy to have an incompetent government as long as they are personally comfortable. Personally, I think over the long-haul, Danielle Smith offers the best opportunity to actually change the face of government to the best interests of all Albertans.
Though, in speaking with him at some length, it wouldn't necessarily break my heart if Ted Morton won the leadership either.
Both Danielle and Ted see the downside of bloated bureaucracy and complacent MLA's who typically do little more than nod their head at their senior administrators more interested in expanding government power than allowing Albertans the freedom to succeed where other Provinces and countries fail under the yoke of an overly intrusive government.
My own concern is in Ted, we see one man in a sea of small "l" liberals - the Allison Redford types - whose only involvement in the PC Party is because their goals could never be met if they ran under the Liberal banner.