Baring Teeth

Well we are past the halfway point in Alberta Election 2012 and in my opinion it certainly hasn't been as exciting as I had anticipated.
After ending the session in the Alberta Legislature in heated debate, I figured all the parties would come out baring their teeth. Not so. Sure we have had a few things such as TV ads and robocalls that stirred a little controversy, but nothing of great substance. We have seen the normal promises of "We will buy your vote with your money" from the PC Party. The same old social policy from the NDP. The Liberals, well....you tell me what they are campaigning on. Finally the Wildrose and a campaign of reform.
The polls suggest that the Wildrose has a commanding lead to date in the election, although they are polls not votes so really quite irrelevant. What it may show is that people are ready for change no matter what policies are. Now I am no political expert, but the PC party has been in power for over 40 years uncontested. The question I have is did the Wildrose under Danielle Smith's leadership bring it down, or did Alison Redford single handed bring it down in her 6 month term? Rumours are that PC members wanted to go to the polls when they had a 20 point lead on the Wildrose. Stubbornly she resisted and felt it was essential to deliver her budget. The problem with the session was the Wildrose ended up with a 13 point lead. As for the budget, with all the new spending promises the PC party can not run on it anyways.The CTF certainly is not impressed.
As of this week the PC party has tried to bare some teeth, needless to say doing nothing more than losing the respect of "old.. white.. males". Then they proceeded to try and go after referendums, same outcome. How can you go after democracy. Earlier they struck a quick nerve touching on conscience rights, gay rights, and abortion. It never took long for the elegant Danielle Smith to shake that one off as fear mongering. The PC's tried policy announcing 140 new health care clinics, AMA stepped in there. Next was the reduction in wait times, Raj Sherman stole that thunder immediately  saying that “fast-track” emergency rooms already exist in every major hospital in the province — it’s called triage. Then came her announcement of $600 + Million in post secondary a mere hour before her debate at Mount Royal University. Cheers rang out on her arrival, of course $85 Million to the school in her home riding would buy that. Everyone could see through that one.
So where does that leave us in the election? No ones numbers have drastically changed since week 2 of the campaign. The Wildrose has sat back, simply deflecting anything the PC party tries to throw at them. The PC's are out of ideas and have no real time left, unless they are sitting on a hydrogen bomb waiting, and the other parties are not even close in support numbers. Policy and good government is not on the voters campaign radar, for me the only place I see any baring teeth is in #abvote on twitter.