Last week Danielle Smith won out in a crowded field to become the new leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta. You may remember Smith from way back when I first explained why I was voting against her, or more recently why she decided to vote against me.
Well as the new Premiere-designate of Alberta, she can't become a proper Premier until she wins a seat in the legislature. As is typically the case when things like this happen, a friendly seat has magically opened up for her, and she's going to run in a byelection. Now there's nothing at all wrong with any of that. What is wrong, however, is that another less friendly seat has been already available. Over at Western Standard you can read David Marsden's criticism of her for picking the safe seat instead of the less-safe seat.
I'm not going to do that. Sure there's almost certainly some political machinations regarding the resignation of Brooks-Medicine Hat MLA Michaela Frey, but those are standard political fare. Marsden says that it reeks of cowardice in advance of next spring's general election, and that's perhaps fair. Yet again, it's not uncommon and in a couple of days nobody but the most wonkish of polemicists would give the matter a second though. However, the mistake Smith made wasn't running in the safer constituency, the mistake was not holding a byelection in the vacant Calgary riding as well.
It's perfectly reasonable for Smith to have killed two birds with one stone, or at least ran two byelections for (essentially) the price of one. Had she ran in the safer seat while also letting voters pick in both cases, she'd have avoided this controversy altogether. Bad move, especially that early in the process. She spent a decade in what Roy Green called the "deserved but forgiving political wilderness" and then showed almost right away that she didn't seem to understand a basic convention of Westminster politics.
Her second mistake came today. In her first press conference she had mentioned the 1000% true fact that the unvaccinated were subject to nasty political and social discrimination over the past year: the sort of discrimination that the political left used to claim to be against when it was their protected categories. Smith had specifically stated that "[the unvaccinated] have been the most discriminated against group that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime" and all hell broke loose. The usual suspects at the CBC and Global News went apeshit. The Jewish Federation of Edmonton, which was silent when a local house of worship was attacked by the police during the WuFlu lockdowns, suddenly demanded that Smith atone for her comments. So Smith's mistake was, as you might guess...
...apologizing.
Look, you never ever ever ever ever ever ever apologize. They are never happy, and you especially shouldn't apologize when nothing you said was untrue. Danielle Smith was born on April 1, 1971. For those Jews keeping score, at no point since 1971 has your religion ever been banned from airplanes. At no point since 1971 have faggots been banned from restaurants. At no point since 1971 have women been unable to attend their uncles' funeral. Even Red Indians, still whining about Residential Schools and the "60s scoop", should be smart enough to notice that since 1971 the Residential Schools were operating on the same model as any public school and that the "60s scoop" (presuming it was even on the same level as the past year of vaccine passports) happened in the sixties which was before 1971. So it was sad to see that Danielle has walked back what she said and, worst of all, promised to "listen" to the retarded morons who want to destroy her by "learning and addressing" their (so-called) issues.
It would have been much smarter for her to say:
Take the car key out of your ear, I specifically said "in my lifetime". It therefore was also implied that I was speaking about Alberta and/or Canada, the political jurisdictions I have spent my life living in. Anybody who wants to claim that their group has within this jurisdiction received the government-mandated discrimination that the unvaccinated have been subject to over the past two years is welcome to make that claim. But you damned well better bring receipts. No oral history, no generalities, no "somebody called me a word I don't like". Prove me wrong, if you dare.
You never show weakness. The reaction to a statement like that should never be one of "setting up meetings with minority community stakeholders" unless you make it abundantly clear that the other side has to do the same for you: the day that Rachel Arab sets up a meeting with Grace Life Church so that she can be told how her wicked anti-sodomite and anti-freedom agenda hurts superior humans to herself, Smith should refuse to play by their silly little games.
