A round up of recent news stories from Alberta:<\/p>\n
1. The Wildrose Alliance have had their first semi-public internal party dust up, over the Little Bow<\/a> nomination. While this certainly isn’t good news<\/em> by any means, it does show that a Wildrose nomination is now worth fighting over. The airing of internal party dirty laundry on the Internet is really just a coming of age ritual for political parties.<\/p>\n 2. Justin Archer pens a guest post<\/a> over at Daveberta on an Alberta Liberal’s perspective of the Alberta Party. By and large, I tend to agree with Justin. Personally, I think the best bet would have been to blow up the ALP after the last election and start fresh – a new name, new members, an outsider in charge. If done correctly, the new party could very well have capitalized on a lot of the anti-Stelmach feelings Danielle Smith has instead lassoed. I’m a Liberal but that means I’m also a pragmatist, so I’m by no means one of these “we’ve lost as Liberals for 80 years and dammit, I’m ready to lose as Liberals for another 80<\/em>” people.<\/p>\n But because I’m a pragmatist, I just don’t see the Alberta Party being able to suck up enough oxygen to survive, so long as the ALP lives. It’s always great to have more options, and I’m sure they’ll appeal to a lot of former Green voters, but the party is basically advocating Liberal policies, and I’m skeptical this movement will accomplish much more than wounding the ALP (more so in the form of lost volunteers than lost votes).<\/p>\n