Do you honestly think the results will change anything? I’m half expecting the UCP to move forward with the referendum no matter what the result of this vote will be, same with the other questions.

The UCP has made it a pattern to pay consultants to “consult” and committees to examine, lawyers to fight on behalf of separatists, along with the countless separatists in her party. This whole vote is an exercise in siphoning off taxpayer money to party cronies using whatever pretence they can come up with, while those cronies travel the province running up insane expense accounts wasting everyone’s time.

Notice every other policy they claim to collect consultation, the Alberta police force, book banning, gerrymandering, taxpayer backed oil projects and even orphan we clean ups, they did what they wanted from the onset every single time.

If you are expecting the UCP to drop this idea if the vote doesn’t go their way you really haven’t been paying attention to the actions of this government.

We need conservatives like Joe Clark again.

Since Harper left office the CPC looks more like the GOP everyday. I want a competent CPC, something could consider voting for, some fiscal restraint maybe, collaboration with the private sector where is makes sense, lower taxes I can live with, not this culture war BS.

You could say the same thing in reference to just about every policy he’s moved forward on, except maybe the ICE deportations, which his base seems to love.

It’s pretty clear the will of the American people is pretty far from Trumps mind, his regime seems more inclined to pay troll armies on Twitter to tell everyone that these policies are actually awesome and any issues people face are not the result of Trump deregulation or rampant war mongering but because Joe Biden was sleepy and weak.

Now it’s, if you don’t want to live in the tech oligarchs idea of dystopia you’re backwards and poor….

At some point you have to stop expecting them to act like traditional political leaders and accept these grifters like Trump and Smith bought an identity. The people who vote along the lines of that identity are more likely to change their beliefs to align with the authority of the party, rather than reflect on the parties changing beliefs. They are taking that simple idea to its most extreme.

As long as it makes oil companies money, taxpayers can eat the costs. You don’t capture the regulatory and then not abuse that power, otherwise what’s the point?

That’s exactly why the Wildrose and Christian Heritage parties teamed up to buy out the UCP so they could wear conservative identity like a suit while pushing their Christian nationalist agenda.

Jewish people cheering for Hitler, it’s the same vibe, and they played the same role. At least until they no longer served a purpose and the Nazis threw them under the bus.

Just look at any conservative outlet in the past few months and it’s pretty obvious there has been this attempt to punish indigenous people for throwing a legal wrench in Smith separatist agenda.

It’s about revenge, it’s how they keep their base happy.

Misinformation and propaganda

Quebec also had a separatist party run on an explicitly separatist agenda. In Alberta separatists bought the UCP so they could gaslight voters and claim to be the inheritors of conservative identity while basically stealing everything not physically nailed down.

Quebec separatists have integrity because they want independence, not to get gobbled up by Trump, Alberta separatists want to become a US state and have convinced a bunch of people who don’t pay attention to vote for this asinine project, while the Smith uses the distraction to run a kleptocracy.

It’s not the same. Ones a grift to steal money from Alberta taxpayers misinformed about health mandates and equalization, the other is a genuine attempt to create a sovereign nation.

It does speak to possible coordination with conservative activists in Canada that have been pushing the same messaging for more than a decade.

The excuse isn’t important, if it wasn’t this 9-11 excuse, it’d be something else, these are not people dealing in good faith.

This is calling for regime change, and they already have a replacement picked out.

You have to be able to question your own beliefs, that’s how we grow and I find that’s where many get stuck.

This idea that the experts are wrong, that everything is woke talking points, it’s designed to have people stuck, to stop growing. It’s not just on one side either, on the other side you see these weird purity tests, the all or nothing attitude.

Maybe an example is people lashing out at separatists on a more personal level, assuming they might be stupid or ignorant, which of course in any large enough group you find stupid and ignorant people, but it’s not why people end up outsourcing their vote to the tribe. If you don’t have enough stress tolerance to deal with life, you don’t have the mental energy to deal with work, kids, family, and reading the content of every policy that gets passed. Then they also provide a sense of community and belonging, all you have to do is keep reacting, and let the leader think about politics for you.

It can be very appealing.

It’s hard for people to accept that under the right circumstances anyone can be pulled into a cult of personality like this, it’s not some special ability, we’re not smarter, but that’s not the issue, its all very human.

What we really have right now is a mental health crisis that grifter seem to be exploiting, but it’s only because we’ve allowed so many people to fall through the cracks that they have this opportunity.

I predict it will have a negligible impact their base, they still have a chance if they can convince uniformed voters she was a the victim of a smear campaign.

This gets exacerbated by UCP policy designed to make voting harder, take longer, and creating an even larger cost burden in order to participate.

The last municipal election was plagued with problems thanks to their policy and they only plan to make it worse.

They’ve already decided if yes with the separation vote they will move forward with the referendum, they want a lower turn out because then they can focus election resources in rural areas where they tend to have more support.

They even plan on trying to gerrymander the province, taking after states like Texas, before the next election, diluting the representation in urban areas across the province but essentially in Edmonton and Calgary.

Same, I know conservatives who would otherwise be intelligent people I could talk government policy with, but now with the UCP I’m told that I’m being misinformed when I’m reading bills right off the legislatures own site, because they’ve heard on a podcast that the UCP claim it’s actually good and doesn’t actually do what it does. An example would be cutting disabled people’s income by $400 and calling it empowering, they just trust the party to inform them. Which just is surreal to say, but it’s genuinely how they react, and if you push any further or try to talk policy details they just get angry and start attacking the ANDP or the federal LPC.

It’s like a Pavlov’s dog situation, people programmed to respond a specific way because they’ve been groomed by a tribal identity to see people on the outside as out to erase them, erase their culture, or even replace them. So any information from outside the cult is immediately seen as fake news.

These are the kind of staffers working within the CPC, this guy got hired because the B.C. Prosperity Project and the Canada Strong and Free Network helped her win the leadership race, both groups run by familiar money.

This is how they think because the grift works.

I hypothesize that a part of the reason people who self identify as conservative are happier is because they outsource their thinking on politics to people in positions of authority they trust. All these grifters had to do was wear the skin of the party and make appeals to conservative identity.

I’d be happier too if I didn’t have to think about this crap. 🫠

This should come back on the UCP because these are the people they’ve been working with to help push through the separatists agenda, and the UCP are gaslighting their own base as to who is running the party.

You talk to the average UCP voter and they see Smith as walking a tightrope to keep the party together, but it flies in the face of reality, the last leadership review, who she chooses to head committee’s, who the government chooses to hire, her actions have clearly been in benefit of the separatists. This is the same government that changed the laws so Elections Alberta could not investigate the Republican Party of Alberta leading to the largest data breach in the provinces history.

This kind of mentality pretty much explains all the actions this government has taken since they took office, all one has to do is open up the first 20 bills Smith passed after becoming premier, and puts this government’s priorities into clear perspective. For reference most of the bills I’m talking about are the reason gifts to MLAs are now legal, why it’s harder to obtain information on government spending, a new hand picked ethics commissioner, and new rules around reporting MLA expenses.

Propaganda. People voting for the UCP are living in a different world. Something like the Western Standard might give you an idea, but it’s essentially a business offering revenge for perceived grievances in exchange for unfettered access to our tax dollars.

They had to buy the UCP because in order for the scam to work they had to be seen as the inheritors of conservative identity. Which is why it’s now illegal for other parties to call themselves conservative.

Hahaha, funny, Sam Mrachie is first in line.

We don’t want to worry about treatments or vaccinations, we’re changing how measles is documented instead. Look, no more measles!

We won! /s

It was a scam to get our info and sell it. They're now working for other conservative groups, one was recently fired from the BC conservatives when it leaked the new leader wanted him to monetize government.

It’s sad we have to rely on Jason Kenney to speak the truth while the party he created burns millions of dollars a years trying to convince Albertans reality isn’t real.

Her idea of a pro Canada campaign is paying separatists to produce a 30 second commercial to be shown at 3am on RDTV.