Western Standard - June 22, 2022


CORY'S RANT： Smith’s aggressive campaign for the leadership.

Topics
Danielle Smith's campaign strategy Smith's leadership race strategy
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Emmett McFarlane Notley Kenny
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Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

205.53

Word count

976

Sentence count

46

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Danielle Smith is the favourite to become the United Conservative Party of Canada's next leader, but there's a lot more to the story than that. She's running a campaign that's focused heavily on Western alienation, and has drawn a deep line in the sand with Ottawa.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So in this first trimester of the UCP party leadership campaign,
00:00:03.800 there's no doubt Danielle Smith's campaign has been capturing most of the spotlight.
00:00:08.100 Smith has hit the ground running with strong, decisive, and controversial policy statements
00:00:13.300 that have actually captured national media attention.
00:00:16.320 In a race with a field of nine contenders so far, it can be tough to stand out among that crowd.
00:00:21.000 Smith's managed to break away from the pack, at least for the moment,
00:00:23.840 and early polls indicate that it could be paying off for her.
00:00:26.580 Now, will this strategy pay off in the long run, though?
00:00:30.000 Smith is focusing heavily on Western alienation and has drawn a deep line in the sand with Ottawa.
00:00:36.020 Her proposal of a sovereignty act calling for Alberta to refuse to cooperate with any federal laws or policies
00:00:40.680 that might adversely impact the province, it's a battle cry.
00:00:45.260 And of course, the usual suspects in the Laurentian Canadian pundit corps were predictably infuriated.
00:00:51.340 One could almost hear Emmett McFarlane's teeth grinding from his posting at University of Waterloo
00:00:57.200 while he hammered out a statement saying,
00:00:58.980 the idea is frankly so absurd and untenable, I'm not even sure it would create a crisis
00:01:03.900 because it would be laughed out of court too quickly for a crisis to develop.
00:01:08.180 What McFarlane may not understand is that the supporters being courted by Smith don't care what he thinks
00:01:13.280 or any of the federal courts might think about this policy.
00:01:15.780 Many of the UCP members who voted to remove Kenney as the leader of the UCP did so
00:01:20.020 because they felt he was being too soft and standing up for Ottawa against federal incursions.
00:01:24.480 They're itching for a battle with the feds and would love to implement something like a sovereignty act
00:01:29.120 while saying to Ottawa, what are you going to do about it?
00:01:32.400 Smith's not taking a secessionist stance, but she's walking a fine line near it.
00:01:36.600 Her proposals could provoke clashes with Ottawa that might lead to a very big surge in secessionist support
00:01:41.900 as the battle goes on. The Sovereignty Act could appeal to alienated Albertans,
00:01:46.820 whether they're supporters of outright provincial independence or not.
00:01:49.920 Gathering those regionalists in her camp gives her a solid support base to work from.
00:01:54.080 These are motivated voters and workers who are going to be tough to pull away from her campaign. 1.00
00:01:58.740 Smith is also courting those who are still furious over lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
00:02:03.060 Kenney lost a lot of support when he had to backtrack from promises never to lock the province down again
00:02:08.060 back in the fall of 2021. Smith's making the promise more stridently than Kenney did
00:02:13.300 and is also vowing to oppose any efforts from the federal government to restrict citizens' rights with mandates.
00:02:19.340 This again will garner Smith a dedicated core of supporters, assuming people trust her promises.
00:02:25.280 Kenney broke his, and Smith has broken trust with her party membership before as well.
00:02:30.760 The biggest handicap Smith has in this race is her own party history.
00:02:33.900 I mean, few people have forgotten the betrayal of when she crossed the floor from the Wild Rose Party
00:02:38.900 to the Progressive Conservatives, but many have begun to forgive her.
00:02:42.020 So, in taking command of the news, though, with this constant releases of policy discussion,
00:02:47.440 her political baggage has been pushed to the wayside.
00:02:50.660 So, strategically, it's been pretty smart. Her campaign's proving to be savvy and clever. 0.98
00:02:54.740 She's targeting and gathering motivated voters early. 1.00
00:02:57.760 There's little sense pandering to a mushy middle in a party leadership race.
00:03:00.740 A candidate needs to appeal to the membership rather than the province as a whole.
00:03:04.860 And this tactic could potentially lead to Smith winning the battle.
00:03:07.940 But will it help her win the war?
00:03:10.340 If Smith wins the leadership, she's going to have six months to convince Albertans
00:03:13.420 to re-elect the UCP in the next general election.
00:03:16.380 Now, while she's been striking all the right chords with UCP members in her leadership campaign,
00:03:20.400 she's also giving the NDP a lot of ammunition to come after her leading up to the next election. 1.00
00:03:25.460 It's not hard to predict what Notley's campaign strategy would be.
00:03:28.540 Smith's going to be painted as an extremist and a separatist who wants to tear up a confederation
00:03:32.520 while putting the health of citizens at risk.
00:03:34.900 And it's going to be tough to defend against those accusations.
00:03:37.640 If Smith drags her feet, though, on following through with her promises,
00:03:40.900 should she win the leadership of the party, the membership is going to turn on her fast.
00:03:45.020 Members have felt used and abused enough already with Kenny's bait-and-switch leadership tactics
00:03:48.960 with things such as the Fair Deal panel.
00:03:51.140 They're not going to have any patience for being strung along by another leader.
00:03:53.980 Smith is going to have to indicate she can provide action to back up the talk,
00:03:57.960 and she's only going to have a few months to do it.
00:04:00.300 Smith could be the populist leader Albertans have been waiting for.
00:04:03.560 Inflation pressures and a heated federal political environment
00:04:06.320 is likely going to lead to more incursions on provincial jurisdiction from the federal government.
00:04:10.680 A premier with an Alberta-first stance could fare very well in such a scenario.
00:04:15.560 Smith also, though, could create a divided environment with instability
00:04:18.960 that might sour voters on the UCP and drive them back to the NDP.
00:04:23.040 Smith is gambling and reaching.
00:04:24.720 If nothing else, she's showing political courage and taking refreshing stances
00:04:28.320 in a race where the establishment candidates have been remaining guarded with their policy stances.
00:04:33.360 The UCP race is definitely not going to be boring,
00:04:35.900 and I expect we're going to see some fireworks
00:04:37.300 as contenders try to find some of the spotlight Smith snatched away from them.
00:04:41.620 Slow, careful campaigns aren't going to cut it in this leadership race.