{"id":1349,"date":"2007-04-02T18:33:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T22:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1349"},"modified":"2007-04-02T18:33:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-02T22:33:00","slug":"alp-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1349","title":{"rendered":"ALP Convention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend was the <a href=\"http:\/\/calgary.ctv.ca\/servlet\/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate\/B\/20070331\/liberals?brand=generic&#038;hub=&amp;tf=CFCNPlus\/generic\/hubs\/frontpage.html&#038;cf=CFCNPlus\/generic\/hubs\/frontpage.cfg&amp;slug=liberals&#038;date=20070331&amp;archive=CFCNPlus&#038;ad_page_name=&amp;nav=home&#038;subnav=fullstory&amp;site_cfcn=http:\/\/calgary.ctv.ca\">Alberta Liberal Party&#8217;s annual convention <\/a>held in the city they are expecting a big breakthrough in next election &#8211; Calgary (no, that&#8217;s not my patented sarcasm, I&#8217;m serious).<\/p>\n<p>I drove down with <a href=\"http:\/\/daveberta.blogspot.com\/2007\/04\/sweet-sweet-calgary.html\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_0\">Daveberta<\/span> <\/a>which allowed me to get a good three hour information session on <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_1\">SU<\/span> politics. Other <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_2\">bloggers<\/span> in attendance include <a href=\"http:\/\/pierretrudeauismyhomeboy.blogspot.com\/2007\/04\/alp-convention-recap.html\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_3\">PTimH<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/davidswann.ca\/blog\/\">David <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_4\">Swann<\/span><\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/darrylraymaker.blogspot.com\/\">Darryl <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_5\">Raymaker<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The convention was <span class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_6\">extremely<\/span> well organized with, I must say, I great selection of food (mmm&#8230;pie&#8230;). The workshops focused on election readiness in anticipation of the upcoming provincial election, expected in early 2008.<\/p>\n<p>Surprising even myself, I managed to wake up in time for the Saturday breakfast and listened to Keith <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_7\">Brownsey<\/span> who is certainly a member of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenkinsella.com\/musings.htm\">church of Warren <\/a>judging from his repeated urgings to go negative early and go negative hard. His recommendation of a TV buy to show 5 or 10 second video clips of <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_8\">Stelmach<\/span> stumbling over his words makes sense to me; just like the Tories are trying to define Dion before he can define himself, it would make sense for the ALP to use the same tactic. Even a cheaply produced add with a limited buy would generate enough earned media to make it worthwhile.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday evening entertaining included a trip to Heritage Park (I presume so that we could see what the city looked like the last time there was a provincial Liberal government). That was followed up with the unnoficial youth <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_9\">CPAC<\/span> hospitality suite.<\/p>\n<p>All the media reports I saw were quite positive of the convention and it certainly seems like the party has its act together &#8211; candidates are being nominated and the debt is being <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_10\">widdled<\/span> down quicker than Ed <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_11\">Stelmach&#8217;s<\/span> credibility. The real litmus test will be the two by-elections expected this spring, including Ralph Klein&#8217;s old seat in Calgary Elbow which is certainly winnable for the Liberals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend was the Alberta Liberal Party&#8217;s annual convention held in the city they are expecting a big breakthrough in next election &#8211; Calgary (no, that&#8217;s not my patented sarcasm, I&#8217;m serious). I drove down with Daveberta which allowed me to get a good three hour information session on SU politics. Other bloggers in attendance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alberta-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}