The entertainment world is marked by pairs. Going way back, we have Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, and Wayne and Shuster. And don't forget Seigfried and Roy, the lion tamers. You can even throw in Tom and Jerry, if you so choose.
The corporate world is no different: Barnes and Noble, A & W, and Johnson and Johnson. And surely you've heard of Ben and Jerry, they of the ice cream fame? Even Sears once had a Simpson.
Universities, at least to the south of us, are the same: Have you heard of William and Mary, Army and Navy, and Texas A and M? And you know that the University of Laval sports moniker is rouge et or (red and gold, I believe).
Pairs in sports are very common, too. I'll let you fill in the blanks for famous quarterbacks and their equally-famous wide receivers; in hockey, we speak of Kane and Toews, Henrik and Daniel, Johnny G and Sean M, and Funston and Trudeau.
Just wondering out loud on that last one: Would one of us be the right winger, and the other, the left winger?
We now have a new tandem for the foreseeable future: Jean and Kenny. Changing metaphors, the new sheriff in town (Brian Jean) has been joined by a (potential) newer sheriff, Jason Kenny. Ultimately, to carry this picture further, one will be the sheriff, the other will be his deputy—but who will be which, no one knows.
In Alberta's worst-kept political secret in recent years, the Progressive Conservative Party elected a new leader a few weeks ago in the person of Jason Kenny...and that by a landslide. And Kenny's main plank in his leadership run was to unite the right in one form or the other.
The Progressive Conservatives have been more "progressive" than conservative for years. "Liberal Conservatives" is a more accurate name They have been a blister in the political butt for all true conservatives for at least a decade: They carried the conservative name, but did not embrace conservative principles.
The Wildrose party has became the new confirmed conservative party (without the "C"), both fiscally and socially (though more the former than the latter) One needs to hold to both to be truly conservative. Jason Kenny, and those who support him, represent that, I think.
If you want to work with another analogy, think of a business takeover. It's a merger of two "companies" (PC and Wildrose), though a faction within the Progressive Conservatives are resisting any alliance whatsoever. Strange, isn't it, that the Progressives aren't really that progressive, after all.
Some of the old guard has even lost its grip on what it means to be truly conservative, but 75% of the delegates at the leadership convention a few weeks ago certainly saw the "light"—especially when Mr. Kenny's main platform was to "unite the right."
"Unite the right," for those of you who have spent the winter in Arizona or cloistered in college classrooms, is a merging (blending, hence, uniting) of all those on the right side of the political spectrum. There needs to be one robust conservative party to defeat the leftists before they completely destroy Alberta.
Brian Jean and Jason Kenny have already met, and plan to do it again and again, with increasing numbers of stakeholders involved in the process. There are papers, policies, and protocol to work through, and these next few months will be most exciting for Albertans. With a change of government in two years, there is hope for Alberta's future
I will flesh out these hopes next week. In the meantime, I was wondering: If Brian is Tom, does that mean Jason is Jerry?
Sure beats the NDP version of Laurel and Hardy,
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