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opinion

Alberta's politics began cracking during the last economic boom, and will keep on cracking until there's a fundamental realignment of parties. The province is simply far too sophisticated and diverse for all of its ambitions, frustrations and fissures to be accommodated in one big, sprawling party.

By fundamental realignment, we mean two large parties - one on the conservative right, the other in the centre - and a small one, the NDP, on the left.

The conservative party will either be the Wildrose Alliance or a merger of it and elements of today's Conservative Party. The centrist party will be something like the fledgling Alberta Party, attracting moderate Peter Lougheed-type Conservatives, Liberals and people previously not involved in politics (such as those who worked for Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi).

The Conservatives began cracking up under Ralph Klein, who, for all his folksy popularity, turned out to be an aimless premier after his first term, when Alberta was seeking a vision. Mr. Klein was eventually forced out by his party when the folksiness wore thin. At the subsequent leadership convention, the cracks widened between the right-winger, Ted Morton, and the Calgary candidate, former treasurer Jim Dinning.

Neither of their blocs was big enough to supplant the other, so Ed Stelmach came up the middle, as the first choice of some but the second choice of many. Like Joe Clark and Stéphane Dion, Mr. Stelmach (a very nice man, by the way) won more for who he wasn't than for who he was. Most important, plenty of Conservatives hoped that Mr. Stelmach would paper over the cracks.

You could see the disillusionment with him, his party and with Alberta politics in general at the last provincial election. The Conservatives won a huge majority (again), but voter turnout fell to a historic low.

Mr. Morton never fully reconciled himself to Mr. Stelmach's victory. He was far to the right of the Premier and was convinced that he, not Mr. Stelmach, should have won. Now, the two men have fallen out publicly, with both resigning (Mr. Morton now, Mr. Stelmach later) in a kind of political melodrama Albertans have seldom witnessed.

If Mr. Morton wins the leadership, Albertans will face an artificial choice between his party and the Wildrose Alliance led by Danielle Smith. It will be a choice between deep blue and dark blue, since the two, whatever their verbal jostling, agree on almost everything.

Even if another candidate wins, the Morton wing of the party will be sufficiently unhappy that droves will defect to Wildrose, leaving the Conservatives with a rump. At which point, some of them will be looking for a more hospitable place.

A fundamental reason for the cracking of Alberta's one-party state is the Harper government's five years in office in Ottawa, a circumstance that has brought the province into federal politics as never before. As long as Albertans felt excluded from the national government, they rallied around one provincial party to press and defend their interests. But with a prime minister from Alberta and a federal Conservative caucus dominating the province, the sense of "us against them," while still around, provides less cement for a governing provincial party to stand up to Ottawa for Alberta. In this sense, Alberta politics will come to resemble the more normal competitive politics that exists elsewhere in Canada.

Non-conservatives, meanwhile, face a fundamental choice. They can rally around the Liberal opposition, or create something new.

The Alberta Liberal Party is a party of nice people, hard workers, eccentrics and "progressives" of various shadings that isn't going anywhere and never has, except years ago when a popular former Edmonton mayor was leader.

Of course, mainline Liberals will say their horse is the one to ride, but they're blowing the best chance they'll ever have to become serious players in Alberta politics. Try as they might, the Liberals will never escape their name. Like it or not, that name is toxic in many parts of the province. The sudden departure of the Liberal leader, David Swann, removes one impediment to the creation of a broad, non-conservative party.

That's why the fledgling Alberta Party is the vehicle that sensible moderates should work to make into something much more serious and powerful. It's the creation of disaffected Conservatives in the Lougheed mould who believe, with reason, that Albertans deserve a better choice in politics and that the Liberal Party, with its name and history of losing, can't provide.

If Liberals come to their senses, and the conservative right tears itself apart before finally coming together in some fashion, Alberta could have what the province desperately deserves: a fair reflection of itself, with more serious politics and better government.

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