{"id":1445,"date":"2007-07-05T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-05T18:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1445"},"modified":"2007-07-05T14:08:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-05T18:08:00","slug":"free-advice-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1445","title":{"rendered":"Free Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the Calgary Elbow by-election win<\/a>, there are obviously a lot of heightened expectations for provincial Liberals<\/a>. But, even though headlines like \u201cStelmach PCs plunge<\/a>\u201d are nice to see, the reality is the Liberals still have a long way to go to have any hope of forming government. So I thought I\u2019d toss a few suggestions out there \u2013 these aren\u2019t all my ideas, just good ideas I\u2019ve heard floated around that might be worth considering.<\/p>\n

1. It\u2019s all about Calgary<\/strong>: The Liberals will need at least 15 seats in Calgary to form even the shakiest of coalition governments and, if Stelmach maintains his rural and Edmonton base, they may need a near sweep of the city. That means a lot of work needs to be done from now until election day to make it acceptable for Calgarians to vote Liberal. Kevin Taft and his four horsemen need to be visible in the city and the ALP should ask themselves \u201cHow would Calgary vote<\/em>?\u201d when making virtually every decision. Calgary thinks it\u2019s the new Toronto which means you need to stroke the city\u2019s ego a little bit every now and then. It also wouldn\u2019t hurt to hire an extra staffer for the city.<\/p>\n

2. Target Seats<\/strong>: Someone should draft a list of 45 \u201cwinnable\u201d seats and the party should focus their resources on ensuring that viable campaigns are run in those ridings. Long term, you don\u2019t want to ignore the tough ridings, but Olds isn\u2019t going Liberal next election and if the goal is to actually win, the party\u2019s very limited resources need to be focused.<\/p>\n

3. Slip of the tongue<\/strong>: It wouldn\u2019t hurt, in my opinion, to get Kevin or an MLA to \u201caccidently\u201d refer to Ed Stelmach <\/a>as Harry Strom <\/a>during the campaign. An election is all about framing of your opponent and I think the easiest framing job on Special Ed would be to paint him as the hapless nice guy farmer who isn\u2019t up to the job of Premier.<\/p>\n

4. The Others<\/strong>: Get the Alberta Alliance into the leader\u2019s debates. Try and marginalize the NDP (that should happen by itself if it looks like the Libs have an actual shot at forming government).<\/p>\n

5. Rural vs. Urban<\/strong>: Back to the framing topic. You don\u2019t want to say it publicly but this should be framed as an urban vs. rural election. The best policy the ALP could put in their platform would be \u201cCity of Calgary\u201d and \u201cCity of Edmonton\u201d acts, which would transfer more powers to the cities. Most major Canadian cities have them and it would be a good way for the party to paint itself as being in touch with urban issues.<\/p>\n

6. A Change Would Do You Good<\/strong>: The most interesting quote I saw from Kevin Taft following the Elbow by election, hinted at something I\u2019ve said for a long time: it\u2019s not natural that many senior citizens who have lived their entire lives in Alberta have been through only one government change. You heard the \u201ctime for a change\u201d and \u201c13 long years\u201d thing from Harper during the last federal election\u2026I think the argument can be made that it\u2019s a little odd to not change governments for 36 or 37 years. We\u2019re getting into Communist Party territory here.<\/p>\n

7. The Liberal-Conservative Party<\/strong>: The Taxpayers federation came out a few weeks ago and said the Liberals had a better platform than the Tories. The Herald referred to them as \u201cKevin Taft\u2019s conservative Liberal Party\u201d in an editorial a few weeks back. The ALP should be preaching fiscal responsibility as their number 1 priority. A few years back, I was a big proponent of the Liberals promising \u201csexy\u201d policy like a bullet train but I think painting themselves as a small c conservative party that will save Alberta\u2019s wealth might be the best course of action.<\/p>\n

8. NOW!<\/strong> Remember point 3? Well, it\u2019s not enough to say Stelmach is Harry Strom because even Kevin Taft wouldn’t go so far as to call Kevin Taft the next Peter Lougheed. The ALP should dig up everything written on the 1971 election and steal it. Have Kevin run from door to door, show some youthful energy, use the same slogan if you want to. Also, as a plus, Lougheed has said some critical things about the PCs of late\u2026wouldn\u2019t hurt adding them to the stump speech.<\/p>\n

9. Stand up for Alberta<\/strong>: As much as it pains me to say it, Kevin Taft is going to have to publicly slam Dion and the federal Liberals at some point during the campaign. The Alberta Liberals needs to distance themselves from the federal party. In an ideal world, they\u2019d change their name, but that won\u2019t happen so they\u2019ll need to go out of their way to make it clear they aren\u2019t the Pierre Trudeau NEP party.<\/p>\n

10. Star Candidates<\/strong>: After the Elbow by election, it wouldn\u2019t surprise me if a few star candidates might be willing to run for the ALP in Calgary. I\u2019d hold off on nominations for a bit and try and recruit a few big names to run in cowtown.<\/p>\n

11. New Blood<\/strong>: As much as I dislike the concept of people changing parties, it would be a big coup to publicly lure a Tory MLA or a few big name Dinning supporters over to the ALP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the Calgary Elbow by-election win, there are obviously a lot of heightened expectations for provincial Liberals. But, even though headlines like \u201cStelmach PCs plunge\u201d are nice to see, the reality is the Liberals still have a long way to go to have any hope of forming government. So I thought I\u2019d toss a few […]<\/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":[71,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2008-alberta-election","category-alberta-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445","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=1445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}