Alberta Votes . . . for Mugabe Again!

Alberta Votes . . . for Mugabe Again!

Pollsters, Pundits, and Academics Amazed; Blame Voters for Being Unvoterly

Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Soviet Union, Equatorial Guinea, Castro—strange bedfellows the Alberta Tories make out with on the world stage in terms of one-party rule.

You would think that the univocal Alberta media would be delighted by a perpetuation of Tory rule, but not when an even more extreme far-right movement was galloping, swords flashing, over the foothills and offering to cleanse the province of those who would willingly pay tax or care for the wellbeing of others.

Across the 1-degree Alberta media spectrum, there was infinite hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing and dismay.  Calgary Herald editorialists emerged from their offices with unaccustomed bruises—all over the shoulders and ears and calves—from rolling around in fits of fury and outrage at the thought that their far-right sugardaddy patrons, the Wildrose, had not won.  Local far-right TV station CTV Calgary even offered as its daily poll question: “Do you regret the way you voted?”  CTV wanted to offer a pointless morning-after pill, wanted to roll back the clock, wanted to say it was all just a nightmare and you could roll over and go back and vote Wildrose if you wanted.

Pollsters were flummoxed.  They could not understand why Albertans did not do as they were told to do.  Jack Mintz went into a coma and was deemed clinically dead, before, rumour has it, his family who had rushed to his side slowly resuscitated him with sibilant whispering repetitions of “Jack. . .it ees mee, AlessANDRA.  Eet iss mee, Allessandra Mussolini, you must ees come back and, eh, elp meeee.”  Tom Flanagan tore up his citizenship card before realizing he could never make this much in Texas and got on the horn to Jason Kenney to restore him as a Canadian asap.  Word came through for the Flanagan family by 3 a.m., thank heavens.  Skilled worker.

One pollster, Marc Henry of ThinkHQ Public Affairs Inc., could do nothing but blame the voter.  He observed that Albertans had clearly said they were going to vote Wildrose, but then didn’t.  Ah-ha.  Those sleazy, sneaky voters—saying they’re going to do one thing and then doing another.  Throughout recorded time, voters have never done that!!  This was all just an attempt to make him look bad!  Luckily, Marc Henry had a podium from which he could declare the quisling nature of those sleazy voters, unlike voters.

Stubborn beasts, voters.  I’ve never really seen an election like this.  From minute one, virtually every pollster, pundit, and academic eagerly predicted a massive implosion of the PCs and an explosion of support for Danielle Smith.  Smith, whose sole claim to fame is that she lived in a bubble doing right-wing screeds as a journalist, mooted climate change and backed up racist and homophobic candidates for her party, saying, hey, it’s free speech, we’re into that.  Following Stephen Harper, she asserted that she wouldn’t legislate on “contentious social issues,” and if hate-preacher Allan Hunsperger wanted to say that gays would go to hell and die perpetually in a “lake of fire,” as Hunsperger wrote, well, that was just Al being Al, and anybody could have an opinion, right?  I’m not big on melba toast, but if someone else wants to eat it, ok, I say. Danielle tried to dipsy-doodle around toleration, but as Al pointed out in writing, tolerating gays isn’t “kind”; rather, it’s “cruel,” because they’re all going to burn in a “lake of fire.”  Danielle figured hey, if 30 and a base worked for Stevie, it’ll work for me.

WHY did every pollster, pundit, and academic eagerly predict a smashing majority for Wildrose? 

Because there’s something in it for them.  Nobody ever, ever wants to side with the losers.  It’s best not to be on the right side of history, but the winning side of history. 

One laughable . . . well, I’ll let him do it for himself (get a load of this-- http://www.mtroyal.ca/ProgramsCourses/FacultiesSchoolsCentres/Arts/Departments/PolicyStudies/Faculty/bfoster.htm), Bruce Foster of Mount Royal University, nearly made a promotion out of primping for Danielle.  Often, people who are _supposed_ to know better take it for granted that they do.  They follow people like Presto Manning (famous solver of complicated problems with simple shibboleths) with steepled hands towards the money god of rightness.  Uh-uh, Bruce, not this time.  But rest easy.  As long as you keep saying what the right wants you to say, you’ll have new shoes (or whatever you think teens think is hot that you think will make teens think that you are hot.  Ouch).

Scott Henning, of the far-right Canadian Taxpayers Federation, grimly announced himself pleased that the elected premier, Redford, had said she’d do something about massive “transition” money paid to losing candidates.  It had to be a tough pill to swallow for Scott, because, after all, he’d been supporting these payments since infancy.  Setting aside the fact that the most fiscally responsible governments in Canada have been provably NDP or Liberal, Scott invested deeply in ideology, and, finding a new home with the Wildrose, he figured he’d be walking down a sunny street on Tuesday, April 24, 2012.  Tough chance for Scott Henning and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, but they’re going to have to back up monster payouts and pensions and entitlements for the only certifiably right-wing party they can find in Alberta for four more years.  Silent on Alberta government excess of four decades, able to speak for four brief weeks during the election, Scott Henning and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation must now go back to the dreary work of supporting the Tories, no matter how much the Tories spend and how much the Tories give themselves, for yet another election cycle.  That nerf basketball hoop in Scott’s office isn’t for nothing.

Pollsters, of course, basically only robocalled seniors who would answer the phone and sit there (party-line phone rings on a treeless plain 100 mi southwest of Medicine Hat, you answer it; it could be your uncle Doug calling you to tell you he just done gone shot off his own foot by mistake, or he’s got BSE and NOW he wants a hospital or a food safety agency), or enter the first 500 000 respondents to a web survey to win a $10 gift certificate to Canadian Tire.

Pundits, craving opportunity like Dracula blood, had no choice.  Buuuuutttt the people; the people they do not like to be told.

Many Tory pundits, pollsters, and academics have been trying to salve their wounds by trumpeting that Alberta would now have a “strong opposition.”  Hm.  Not even half the governing majority, barely even what it was under Getty?  No doubt, like Presto, they are already thinking of a Wilderrose Party.  See you in four years.  Plus ca va changer.

--zr