Canada

Its the scare Quebec into allowing a pipeline. America wants a pipeline to defund Russia, and America gets what they want via manipulation of other countries political system.

This is actually really interesting.

So like, on the one hand, this sucks because in catering to the separatist movement, she moves the Overton window further to the right, but on the other hand, Smith's main goal is for Alberta to follow Conservative values, but not so far as others in the UCP and their supporters.

Strategically, in terms of her end goals, this move she's made makes sense. The UCP is quite literally the United Conservative Party, brought together by a merger of the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose after they and right-wing policies lost the election to what was for the most part, a united left-wing with the NDP if you ignore the Alberta Liberals.

Now when the NDP won in Alberta under Notley, right-wing parties actually gained a higher percentage of the vote, just they were split between the Wildrose headed by Brian Jean, and the Progressive Conservatives, who at that point had several years of controversy between Jim Prentice and Allison Redford. Danielle Smith, as the former leader for the Wildrose who ran against Redford's Progressive Conservatives in 2012, is seeing a risk factor for a "united right" to fall apart, potentially handing over another win to left-wing politics in the province, which she likely sees as a greater threat since the possibility of an NDP government is statistically higher than Alberta leaving Canada.

No matter what she loses here, either she risks a party split leading to a split right-wing vote in the upcoming election and possibly handing her political opponents a win, or she loses more centre-right votes to the NDP (who are arguably moving more to the centre) by appealing to the fringes of the party with a referendum.

I hate to say it since I'm no Conservative, but frankly this could all be avoided if the province instills proportional representation in it's elections. As much as I love the NDP, we quite literally should have never had them in power like we did as they won a minority 40% of the vote.

"Just let me pander to these fringe extremists so they stop wanting to leave my party"

Better idea. Don't do that. Tell the fringe extremists to kick bricks, set the UCP on fire, and let the rest of us have 4 years of actual prosperity under the NDP.

I think the right needs another voice haha

What