What if the right has already united?

This could become one of the big storylines of 2016 in Alberta politics.  As the province faces what appears to be continuing uncertainty with low oil prices, many questions are going to be asked about what's next.  All parties will be facing a myriad of questions about how they could best grapple with the economy.  Because we all know that within a few years, voters will likely look back on 2015-2016 to decide who's best to run this province.

It's hard to believe that we're already on the election trail but that's what this year could look like.  The parties will likely be trying to stake their claim on what victory looks like, because this is what voters will remember in three years.  And being in opposition, the political right will be doing everything it can to sway voters on the fence to come back to their side.  But the question becomes: can they?

You see, there's an interesting debate happening in Alberta's political world right now.  It's about "uniting the right."  They are, of course, speaking about the Wildrose and the Progressive Conservatives, who at one point in time were united.  But due to a change at the top (the post-Klein era), those sitting on the far right (the big-C conservatives) decided to create their own party (the Wildrose).  They would argue that the PC's had fallen from "just right of centre" to "just left of centre."  And maybe that's why some people weren't really surprised that when Jim Prentice (former Harper government MP and high-profile cabinet minister) took the PC leadership, some of the Wildrose faithful (including the leader) talked about getting back together with the party they were originally with, because they felt Prentice would play the perfect peace-maker.

Of course, the script didn't quite play out like that.  You all don't need a history lesson.  But there is one side of the "unite the right" debate that hasn't been made abundantly clear yet.

You see, for years, the PC Party was "just right of centre."  The whole idea of being a Progressive Conservative (which if you actually look at the name is quite the paradox: can you really be progressive and conservative at the same time?) was that they were socially progressive and fiscally conservative.  In other words, they believed in good social policy but would make sure the chequebook was in order at the same time.  And Albertans seemed to like that.  They did keep them in power for 40+ years after all.  It is a tightrope act though.  You can't focus too much on the social policy or the chequebook gets out of whack.  If you focus too much on the chequebook, you'll be throwing too much of the social policy out the door.  

And so begins the challenge for the "unite the right" movement.  What if the right is already united, under the banner of the Wildrose?  The perception is still out there that they are further right than what remains of the PC's.  So will the Wildrose be willing to wiggle over to the left a little bit to be more politically popular, in particular in the urban areas, where social issues are obviously still a very big point of contention?  Would the Wildrose be willing to operate in the same part of the political spectrum once occupied by the PC Party?  On the flipside, will the PC Party be willing to move a little more to the right to join the Wildrose?  Even beyond that, would the Wildrose be willing to saddle up next to the party they called thieves and liars, helping dismantle the dynasty?  While those two parties may agree on a few fiscal platforms, you have to wonder about the social policies.

Which begs the question: is the right already united?  And if it is, should the real debate be whether or not the "centre" needs to be united.

Now, in Alberta, the centre is a bit skewed because it's not technically in the centre but it's where the PC regime lived.  But can that party be revived after what's happened in the past few years?  What kind of leader would be needed to bring back the confidence of the people?  Can that leader shake the skeletons left behind by the last few years worth of controversy?  Or does there need to be a movement where maybe another party joins them, like the Alberta Party?  Or will the average voter just say "once a PC, always a PC"?

I was also quite interested in a recent story I was reading about Alberta being "more progressive" than some may have thought.  What I was fascinated by was the question of whether voters considered themselves to be progressive.  Not to sound too flippant, but what does that even mean?  Progressive in social policy?  Progressive in fiscal policy?  Progressive as in an NDP supporter?  Liberal supporter?  A PC supporter?  It's a pretty broad-based question if you ask me.  And then there's the implication that voting conservative in any way is supposedly wrong.  Even if it's in the PC-sense, where the taxpayer just wants their money to be spent prudently.  

The interesting thing in all of this is that if the "unite the right" movement is successful, does this take us even closer to American-style politics, where you have a definitive left-wing party and a definitive right-wing party?  And if that does, is that really what Albertans want?  They never really seemed hot and bothered by the PC's until the last couple of administrations.  So what if a party was able to promise a move back to the "good ol' days"?

As a life-long Albertan, I take offense to the idea that Albertans were nothing but hillbillies before the NDP was voted in.  This was the place to live.  People moved and stayed here.  We got "the best of the best" just as so many people had asked for.  So the question that pops into my head (yes, another one) is this: what was wrong with Alberta before?

Just to be clear, this isn't an endorsement for the PC's or any other party for that matter.  But somewhere along the line, this train has fallen off the tracks.  We've never seen political discourse like we're seeing now.  The fear-mongering, vitriol and flat-out hatred is something I never thought I'd ever see.  No matter what happens between now and the next election, we can only hope that cooler heads prevail, and someone comes forward with a solutions-based way of thinking.  That's what it felt like we were for quite some time.  If things got tough, we rolled up our sleeves and figured out how to fix it.  We didn't govern based on who would vote for us and we didn't oppose for the sake of opposing.

And until someone remembers that, I don't know if it will really matter if the left, right or centre needs to be "united."