I'm on Ralph's Team

Today is a very important day. Important enough for me to break my self-imposed silence for the past few months. Later this morning, I will pick up my friends and make the three-hour drive to Calgary to participate in this weekend’s provincial Progressive Conservative Annual General Meeting. I’ve attended eight or nine of these events, usually with great enthusiasm. But this year is different. I have a sick feeling in my stomach (and it’s not due to contemplating the enormous quantity of free alcohol I will be offered over the next couple of nights).

Tonight, delegates will be asked to vote on whether to engage in an early leadership review process. This is despite the fact that our current leader, Ralph Klein, has already stated his intention to step down 3 to 3.5 years into his current mandate and in fact promised to do so during the election campaign. But apparently that’s not good enough for some people. Some people think that Canada’s longest-serving Premier has served long enough and it’s time to hand him his hat and coat and ask him not to let the door hit his ass on the way out! And I am told that these people will constitute a sizable minority (or more) among tonight’s voting delegates.

I make no bones about being a Ralph Klein supporter. Although a federal Conservative since the mid-1980s, I was unimpressed with the provincial party until 1992. Then I bought a membership to vote for Ralph. I watched with amazement as he began to do exactly what he promised to do and I was fully converted and have worked hard (usually full-time) on every provincial election campaign from 1993 on. Metaphorically, and sometimes physically, I’ve been there when he achieved the ‘miracle on the prairies’ or when he promised not to ‘blink’ and when he welcomed us to ‘Ralph’s World’

Now I have neither the time nor inclination to write page after page outlining all the positive things Ralph has done for this province and his party. Suffice it to say that he did what many believed to be impossible and the Alberta of today hardly resembles the Alberta he received at the end of 1992. I’ll save the list of accomplishments for his eulogy, which I hope is a lot further off than some people think.

What I will say is this: In 1993, the PC Party should have gone the way of the Socreds, the UFA and the provincial Liberals and then swiftly faded from the Alberta political scene. That didn’t happen because (just) enough people in the 1993 election trusted Ralph to do what he said he was going to do and then backed him when he kept his word, even when doing so confounded the ‘experts’. There isn’t a PC MLA elected in 1993 (including Dr. Oberg) who doesn’t owe their subsequent career to Ralph and not a person who worked in that 1993 campaign that doesn’t know the truth of the role he played. For that reason alone, Ralph Klein deserves our Party's ringing endorsement tonight. But as Josef Stalin said, “Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”

And while I’m in a quoting mood, in 1909, Arthur Balfour, then leader of the British Conservative Party (and Prime Minister from 1902-06), said: “I have the greatest respect for the Conservative Party Conference, but I would no more consult it on a matter of high policy than I would my valet.” I’d like to think Conservatives have come a long way since then, but I guess I’ll find out tonight. Because if members of this party turn their backs on Ralph Klein, who has done so much for this party and province, they will do so with my utter contempt.