Neo-Populist Rhetoric 1

Mediating the Outrageous Democratic Spirit: The Wildrose Alliance, Neo-Populist Rhetoric, and the Albertan Press

Tyler Morgenstern Simon Fraser University

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Neo-Populist Rhetoric 2 Professor Cross Submitted April 7, 2011 From the Christian- and market-fundamentalist American Tea Party movement, to the anti-immigrant, ultra-nationalist parties gaining ground in nations such as Germany, The Netherlands, France, Norway, and Austria (Bos et. al, 2010), the early years of the 21st Century have borne witness to a resurgence in right-wing populist politics1. Buoyed by an anti-elitist, anti-status quo, and pro-democratic rhetoric, these emergent organizations have succeeded in garnering a limited but critical share of voter support in a number of areas, and have in many cases, come to dominate the political news agenda. As Hollar (2010) writes, for example, a Tea Party Convention held in February of 2010, despite attracting only around 600 attendees, received 177 mentions in the ten major media outlets sampled in her study. By contrast, the United States Social Forum, held concurrently in Detroit, attracted upwards of 20,000 progressive activists, yet received only three mentions in the same sample. As Fahey (2007) reminds us in her study of the framing of John Kerry during the 2004 US presidential election, this kind of selective amplification, which problematically privileges certain rhetorical frameworks above others, may powerfully intervene in the definition of electoral agendas, and as such, in the democratic process itself; a capacity that becomes particularly compelling when applied to the case of new populist movements. Where the interpretive and rhetorical frameworks around established political figures are often rigidly ossified, emergent actors tend to enter the political landscape relatively unburdened by discursive associations. Populist parties then, in that they tend to form somewhat spontaneously in response
1

During revisions on this paper, the potential implications of this increasingly powerful political presence were made tragically clear. In July 2011, Anders Brejvik, an anti-Muslim, ultranationalist terrorist killed nearly 80 people in twin attacks on the headquarters of Norways center-left government in Oslo and on its youth wing at a camp on Utya Island.

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 3 to particular conditions or events (Bos et. al, 2010; Canovan, 1999), are, in some measure, blank slates (Basen, 2009, p. 301). They are uniquely positioned to establish their own rhetorical and representational frameworks, yet are also threatened by the prospect of the popular press and the extant political establishment doing so first. However, where much ink has been spilled characterizing the populist resurgence as a social phenomenon, relatively little has been devoted to the question of precisely how populist messaging strategies propagate through the press (Mazzoleni, 2003). It should come as little surprise then, that the recent rise of the Wildrose Alliance, a right-wing neo-populist party operating at the provincial level in Alberta, Canada, remains entirely undocumented by scholars of political communication2. As a means of addressing this critical gap, this paper will highlight the key rhetorical strategies promulgated by the Wildrose Alliance and its current leader Danielle Smith, but more importantly, will explore to what extent the popular Albertan press has responded to, internalized, or rejected this rhetoric. An analysis of news items published by Albertan dailies The Calgary Sun, The Calgary Herald, and The Edmonton Journal suggests, in line with Bos et. als (2010) hypotheses regarding media representations of populist leaders, that where the tabloid press tends to uncritically amplify the rhetorical frameworks crafted by the party itself, more elite papers tend to approach the Alliances rhetoric with a greater sense of skepticism, despite routinely publishing articles authored by Smith herself. This bifurcated representational pattern, I suggest, gestures toward an elitist lobby effort built into the Wildrose

Shortly after this paper was first written, powerful tensions within the Alliance caucus surfaced when a number of board members resigned, citing leader Danielle Smiths undemocratic, third-world dictatorship leadership. A small group of dissenters have since left the party and rejoined the incumbent Progressive Conservative government. The Alliance insists that its ambitions for provincial leadership are unchanged, but many question whether it will last until the next election.

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 4 initiative that diverges from and even contradicts the populist, of the people rhetoric so central to their messaging strategies. Before proceeding, some methodological issues should be clarified. The news items examined for this paper were published, except where noted, between January 2010 and March 2011. Keyword searches of LexisNexis (for the Herald and the Journal) and ProQuest (for the Sun) databases were used to locate articles containing the terms Wildrose Alliance and Danielle Smith. From this body of text, key news items were sampled purposively to reflect the trends that characterized the general timbre of each publications coverage. All official party communications cited in this paper, including transcripts of speeches and public addresses, are quoted as published on the Wildrose Alliance website. As this is an early exploration of an emergent political organization, my analysis is rooted primarily in qualitative discourse analysis, and of course would benefit from more rigorous quantitative data gathered through long-term media monitoring and content analysis efforts. In turn, this paper is best read as a preliminary investigation into an understudied trend within Canada, as well as a heuristic from which further study might depart. In his seminal study of the relationship between right-wing populism and the media, Mazzoleni (2003) points out that, like other radical right-wing movements, populism is notoriously difficult to define. Canovan (1999) asserts that this difficulty springs largely from the fact that populist movements tend to coalesce mainly in times of governmental crisis and disillusionment among the electorate, and as such, tend organize and frame themselves less through rigidly defined platforms and more through single-issue mandates that adamantly oppose the prevailing political establishment. In turn, they are more effectively described by common characteristics than by any general theory rooted in ideological, philosophical, or historical

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 5 narratives (Canovan, 1999, p. 3). The representational strategy developed by the Wildrose Alliance in particular makes frequent use of three such characteristics. Firstly, populist parties, in that they often lack a firm footing in the mainstream political landscape, rely heavily on highly visible and controversial leadersendowed with distinctive public speaking skills and in some cases with media-genic personal qualities (Mazzoleni, 2003, p. 5). Bos et. al (2010) suggest that the success of these leaders tends to relate to their prominence, their authoritativeness, and their perceived populism. Prominence here refers to the amount of media attention a politician is able to garner (p. 143) authoritativeness to how knowledgeable a politician is about the political topics discussed, and populism to a style of self-presentation characterized by the use of highly emotional, slogan-based, tabloid-style language (ibid), inflected with a sense of verbal radicalism (Betz & Immerfall, as quoted by Bos et. al, 2010, p. 145). The Wildrose have proven themselves particularly adept in this regard, having garnered a tremendous volume of media coverage, most of which has been focused on leader Danielle Smith. For example, a ProQuest search of the Calgary Herald for articles published in the last twelve months containing the term Wildrose Alliance returns over 400 results. A search of the same paper over the same period for the name Danielle Smith returns more than 200 articles. Smith herself is a deeply media-genic (Mazzoleni, 2003, p. 5) figure with an intimate understanding of news values and journalistic practice. She contributed to the Calgary Herald as a columnist for six years, served as host of the now-defunct current affairs television program, Global Sunday and has hosted and produced two programs, Health Frontiers and Standing Ground, on regional AM radio (Wildrose Alliance Website). Smiths media pedigree is affirmed by her photogenic appearance and articulate manner of speaking, which, in line with general

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 6 assessments of populist rhetoric, tends to rely upon pithy sloganeering, and indeed, a kind of verbal radicalism. For example, in a speech delivered to Edmonton party members on March 2, 2011, Smith made liberal use of evocative, tabloid-style sentences, remarking, for example, The premiere with the biggest legislature majority in the country has been pretty much forced out by his own partywhy does it take organized public fury all across rural Alberta to get their [the governments] attention?...We dont just need a new premier, we need a new government (para. 16, 17, 42). Further, in the same speech, Smith invokes the radical right-wing policies and language of British Prime Minister David Cameron, characterizing his aggressive austerity cuts as a reasonable response to an irrational financial crisis. In her words, what Prime Minister Cameron is challenging Britons to consider, and what we in the Wildrose are challenging Albertans to consider, is perhaps there is a better way to care for the most vulnerable in our society (para. 47). A second characteristic of populist rhetoric frequently employed by the Wildrose is an emphasis on the grassroots and the average voter as a key site of political action. In that populisms fundamental structural characteristic is popular mobilization against the political and intellectual elites, populist parties often reject ossified institutional structures, including bureaucratic layers of organization, as well as the elitist complex language of representative politics in favor of an identification with the common man (Canovan, 1999, p. 6; Bos et. al, 2010, p. 144). Related to this grassroots orientation is a discourse of nativism, which, at least in the European context explored by Bos et. al (2010), may be defined in terms of a celebration of the homeland that involves proposing to halt immigration, sending back sentence immigrants or fundamentalists and promoting or defending the [national] identity or culture (p. 144, 148). A nativist discourse positions populist leaders as figures capable of defending the essence and

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 7 integrity of a given people and place. The Wildrose Alliance, in its rhetorical and branding efforts, frequently mobilizes these tendencies. Where all other Albertan parties take their names from the abstract realm of political philosophy- the Progressive Conservatives (PC), the New Democratic Party, the Liberal Party of Alberta- Smiths party brands itself as an organic outgrowth of Wild Rose Country itself. This label evokes not only a sense of provincial solidarity and sovereignty, but also, by mobilizing natural metaphors, draws on Albertas historical narrative, obsessed as it is with frontiersmanship, wildness, and an intimate relationship with the land. Quite literally then, the Wildrose positions itself as of the grassroots, of the land, and of the people. Finally, while many critics tend to dismiss populism as a pathological formation on the fringes of legitimate democracy, Canovan (1999) urges us to recognize that populists see themselves as true democrats, voicing popular grievances and opinions systematically ignored by governments, mainstream parties, and the media (p. 2). This is a rhetorical framework taken up with vigor by Danielle Smith, who, in her public speaking engagements, often references (in a predictably tabloid fashion) the ineffectuality of the Albertan democratic process, and poses the Wildrose as the only solution. For example, in the March 2011 address cited above, she remarked, are we prepared to accept a government that stifles democratic choice?...If you want social support that delivers, if you want a public health system that actually worksif you want a balanced budget, if you want a democracy thats democratic then help us make it a reality (para. 77, my emphasis). Similarly, in an October, 2010 address to Calgary party members, Smith began by remarking I wont overstate this, but in a province like ours so dominated for so long by one party I appreciate that just coming here may actually take some nerveSo I do thank each of you for your open mind and your outrageous democratic spirit (para. 1).

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 8 There is little question, then, that the Wildrose Alliance has attempted to construct an interpretive and discursive framework predicated on a number of the values central to the populist project. However, as Lewis (2001) reminds us, such cultural forms, while indeed interesting exercises in language and meaning in their own right, only take on popular influence when strategically invoked in eliteand consequently mediadiscourses (p. 37, emphasis in original). As such, of perhaps greater importance than the details of the Alliances messaging strategy is the question of how the Albertan media have internalized, qualified, and/or repeated the language promulgated by the party. To explore this question, I will take a cue from Bos et. als (2010) research design by examining articles drawn from tabloid paper The Calgary Sun and elite dailies The Calgary Herald and The Edmonton Journal. Before proceeding, some methodological issues should be clarified. The news items examined for this paper were published, except where noted, between January 2010 and March 2011. Keyword searches of LexisNexis (for the Herald and the Journal) and ProQuest (for the Sun) databases were used to locate articles containing the terms Wildrose Alliance and Danielle Smith. From this body of text, key news items were sampled purposively to reflect the trends that characterized the general timbre of each publications coverage. All official party communications cited in this paper, including transcripts of speeches and public addresses, are quoted as published on the Wildrose Alliance website. As this is an early exploration of an emergent political organization, my analysis is rooted primarily in qualitative discourse analysis, and of course would benefit from more rigorous quantitative data gathered through long-term media monitoring and content analysis efforts. In turn, this paper is best read as a preliminary investigation into an understudied trend within Canada, as well as a heuristic from which further study might depart.

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 9
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Findings We will turn first toT the Calgary Sun, in that it epitomizes the ways in which tabloidstyle publications often uncritically adopt, amplify, and even endorse the message strategies crafted by populist parties. The Sun, eschewing the journalistic ethic of objectivity and often neglecting the practice of representing both sides of the story, tends to frame both Wildrose policy and messaging in rather neutral terms, leaving the partys rhetoric wholly in tact and unqualified. For example, in a story published February 26, 2011 entitled Wildrose pens balanced budget, which briefly discusses the partys publication of a shadow provincial budget, journalist Pamela Roth devotes most of her 243-word piece to direct, unqualified quotes from Danielle Smith. On the rare occasion that Roth employs her own voice, she mostly affirms the fundamental soundness of the document, writing, for instance, according to party leader Danielle Smith, the Wildrose balanced budget alternative has three simple steps that would easily eliminate the $3.4-billion deficit. This includes ending corporate handouts, $4.2 billion in capital investment and responsible increases to core government services (para. 2, 3). This lede immediately frames the budget, despite its dramatic (approximately $900 million) spending cuts, as balanced, responsible, and logically sound. Further, the intricacies of formulating fiscal policy are here completely overlooked. Rather, the budget is distilled to three simple steps that would easily eliminate thedeficit, amplifying the populist tendency to reject complex bureaucratic and legislative procedure. In fact, this phrasing almost directly echoes the kind of language employed by Smith in her October 2010 address to Calgary party members, where she remarked, [p]olitically democratically were in a mess. We Albertans simply have to get our act together. And we can. Lucky for us, this too is not all that hard (para. 10).
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Neo-Populist Rhetoric 10 Finally, Roth employs, in the allegedly neutral voice of the journalist, evocative terms such as corporate handouts, which in a notoriously c/Conservative region such as Alberta, are laden with culturally resonant images of a haughty government out of step with the needs of average citizens, once again invoking and compounding an anti-elitist, of-the-people rhetorical trope. Another particularly notable instance of this amplificatory tendency is seen a short uncredited news piece published September 18, 2010 under a headline that directly quotes Smith: Fort Mac ethical oil capital of the world. The entire article simply repeats, with no critical commentary, remarks made by Smith to the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce during the unveiling of the Wildrose environmental policy book. There is no attempt in this piece to even acknowledge the international furor ignited by the term ethical oil, nor is there any mention of the ways in which the development of the Fort McMurray tar sands has in fact devastated much of the land the Alliance so often celebrates in their branding and communication initiatives. Rather, the Sun simply amplifies the ideological and political messaging crafted by the party by either quoting it directly, or wrapping it in the neutralized, dispassionate voice of the journalist. This representational style, however, does not lie only in such subtle nuances of tone, diction, and slant, but also in the papers towing of an overtly pro-party editorial line. Dave Breakenridges opinion piece, Opposition parties right on the money (February 28, 2011), for example, begins with the compelling suggestion that [w]hen the Wildrose Alliance and the Alberta Liberals are singing similar versions of the same song, then you know they may be onto something (para. 1). Yet he proceeds to frame the latter party as weak and listless, quipping, the Liberals are playing it like James Taylor while the Wildrose are cranking it up to Ted Nugent levels (para. 2). In an even more callous comparison, Breakenridge refers to Smith as Wildrose leader, while labeling Liberal leader David Swann a lame duck Grit (para. 3). The

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 11 conclusion of the column does indeed refer to Smith as a Wildrose extremist, yet remains skewed firmly in her favor, as the term extremist, at the very least, suggests decisiveness, while the parallel term that Breakenridge applies to Swann, bleeding-heart leftist, reaffirms images of social democracy as untenable, utopian, and fraught with the twin burdens of welfare and collectivism (para. 22). Given the populist tendency to construct prevailing political authorities as the sluggish proprietors of a defective democratic process, the association created here between the Wildrose and strong leadership is a more-or-less direct adoption of the populist framing strategies promulgated by Smith herself. In her March 2011 address, for example, she remarked that leadership takes guts (para. 28), an assertion directly at odds with the lame duck, bleeding-heart language that Breakenridge here attaches to the Liberal party. The significance of this editorial advocacy should not be understated. As McNair (1997) writes, the editorial is the most important voice of a newspaper, and is engineered to reflect what the publications editorial board believes to be the collective voice of its readers, as well as to enact the papers own political identity (p. 70). Following this assertion, the voice of the Wildrose becomes, in many respects, the voice of the Sun, which is in turn thought to be the voice, and collective thoughts, of the reader. In a dramatic contrast, both The Edmonton Journal and The Calgary Herald, Albertas two elite dailies, which tend to address a more professional urban readership, routinely approach the Wildrose with a sense of skepticism by situating Smiths comments within broader discussions, while also utilizing images of violence and aggression to characterize her political strategy. Where the Sun, for example, broke news of the Wildrose shadow budget in a manner that positioned the document as relatively benign, Sinnema and Kleiss Calgary Herald article on the subject (February 26, 2011) suggests a more cautious approach. Even the headline,

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 12 Snelgrove boasts of favourable response to his Alberta budget; Wildrose says its plan would have saved $900M, privileges the positive legislative response to the PC budget, and eschews the language of balance so central to the Sun article. Further, Sinnema and Kleiss devote much of their article to commentary from PC Finance Minister Lloyd Snelgrove, while giving only relatively circumspect coverage to the Wildrose alternative, noting near the very end of the article [m]eanwhile, Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith presented an alternative, balanced provincial budget Friday that cut support for mass transit and carbon capture, sliced arts and venture capital funding, and reigned in spending on health, education and agriculture (para. 6). Here, while the term balance does indeed appear, it is dramatically contradicted by an emphasis on the aggressive, even controlling (reigned in) nature of the cuts proposed in the document, a rhetorical strategy that seriously troubles any notion that the Wildrose budget works in the best interest of the people. The authors also give Snelgrove the last word of the piece, further unsettling an already unsympathetic mention: Snelgrove insisted the cuts and reductions proposed by the Wildrose would have a negative effect on Albertans. Furthermore, he said, the cuts are unnecessary, given that the province has savings in the bank (para. 11, 12). Here, the budget appears neither neutral nor rationally related to the needs of the province, but rather an almost vanguardistic initiative out of step with the reality of provincial politics and economics. Similarly, in an article published February 6, 2011, journalist Graham Tompson, while presenting Smith in a generally positive and complementary light, still makes note of her ruthlessness (para. 6) and quips, [w]e like the passion for democracy, but could you tone down the overblown rhetoric on property rights? (para. 7). An uncredited story published in the Herald on January 28, 2011 echoes this approach to Smiths aggressive political maneuvers, referring to her as a fiscal hawk, who, following the release of the 2010 PC budget, came out

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 13 swingingtaking direct aim at [Finance Minster] Morton as a big spender. She then released her partys shadow budget, slashing expenses (para. 5, my emphasis). Once again, the neutral journalistic voice and emphasis on balance, logic, and rationality so common in the Sun is replaced by more evocative terms that frame Smith as an unapologetic and ruthless leader. This sense of skepticism also appears in the Edmonton Journal. Indeed, on February 19, 2011, the paper even published a guest column by Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, the only union voice located in this sample. Smith systematically attacks the rhetoric of the Wildrose leader, who frequently cites Sweden as a successful model on which to base regional healthcare reform, arguing, [i]t's true, Sweden has one of the top health systems in the world, but it's important to note the political and social differences in that country that make their system so successful. Simply put, Sweden benefits from a long history of policies implemented by a social democratic government, and Alberta does not (para. 4). This kind of examination, which addresses the historical, systemic, and structural dimensions of healthcare policy, is entirely absent in the Calgary Sun, reflecting the tendency for heavily commercialized media (such as tabloid papers) to favor what Iyengar terms episodic frames above more complex thematic frames. Where the latter compel us to examine individual phenomena as symptomatic of broad processes of social causality, episodic frames tend to isolate events, ideas, and people from these processes, ultimately circumventing any call to interrogate the chronic roots of acute social issues (McNair, 1997; Lewis, 2001). This style of framing is contiguous with populist rhetorical tactics, which often cite (as the Wildrose Alliance does with the Albertan government), individual people, parties, or organizations as the sole causes of political failures, without interrogating the broader conditions and contexts in which these failures take shape.

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 14 In many respects then, the Albertan press seems to fall in line with the hypotheses laid out by Bos et. al (2010), in that the Calgary Sun, a decidedly tabloid-style publication, tends to amplify the populist rhetoric crafted by the Wildrose Alliance, while the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal often balance the partys rhetoric by privileging the successes of the prevailing PC government and projecting the Alliance as a rather marginal entity, firmly on the outskirts of institutional politics. There is a peculiarity in this pattern, however, that bears some consideration here. While the Sun indeed amplifies the voice of the Alliance, according to a simple LexisNexis search, Danielle Smith herself has published only one column in the paper since 2008. By contrast, since becoming party leader in 2009, she has published fourteen columns in the Calgary Herald under her own name, a figure that jumps to forty when the search is expanded by one year. In these columns, Smith assumes the role of pundit to address, in terms that uphold her far-right political priorities, issues such as healthcare reform, the need to restrain allegedly reckless PC spending, and, in line with populist rhetorical tactics, democratic revitalization. In 2002 for example, before being elected party leader, Smith authored a series of columns for The Calgary Herald entitled Democracy in Alberta, in which she addressed the dissolution of citizen participation under the prevailing PC government. The final installment in the series, Reviving democracy in the republic of Alberta (my emphasis), connects this democratic discourse directly with a populist language of nativistic provincial solidarity. To be certain, this vast publication gap is partially explained by Smiths insider position at the Herald, and so should not be seen as a function of the type of paper alone, yet it still compels us to ask why a populist leader would choose to advocate her partys position in a paper that routinely positions it as fringe, while neglecting to leverage the support of the Sun. I would like to suggest that this gap reveals an important divergence between the partys key symbolic

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 15 strategies and the reality of its political practice. While pursuing a populist rhetoric that valorizes the grassroots and emphasizes identification with the electorate, the party, by publishing in papers such as the Herald that cater to an urban business and policy elite, actively partakes in the very form of political lobbying that it routinely criticizes as non-representative and nondemocratic. Smiths own biography, referenced briefly above, gestures toward this elite strategic orientation. Her career in politics began with an internship at right-wing think tank the Fraser Institute (where ex-PC premier Ralph Klein is now a Senior Fellow), a path she followed with directorships at both the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (Wildrose Alliance, 2010). Her more recent work with the now-dissolved CanWest media empire, notorious for its strict pro-business editorial policy, is even further out of sync with the pastoral, nativistic, anti-elitist imagery she so commonly invokes in her public speaking engagements. Thus, while rhetorically in line with the people and the grassroots, this publication gap points toward the very real institutional-bureaucratic level at which the Wildrose operates. It directs its most ambitious lobby efforts squarely toward the elite readership of the Calgary Herald, positioning these voters as the persuadable demographic, the key to shoring up necessary support in an election campaign. As they allegedly speak for the people, the Wildrose thus makes every effort to speak to and appease the elites they decry, largely by capitalizing on the privileged position of figures such as Danielle Smith within the ranks of right-wing political think tanks, media organizations, and policy bodies. While perhaps far removed from the explosive racial, ethic, and cultural tensions that have exploded across Europe in the last decade, giving rise to a number of xenophobic populist movements, Albertas Wildrose Alliance nonetheless replicates many of the fundamental rhetorical and representational strategies that they deploy; it valorizes democratic revitalization,

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 16 asserts a deep identification with the land and its people, and rallies around the leadership of Danielle Smith. The tabloid press, as we have seen, has acted mostly as an echo chamber for this rhetoric, while the more elite provincial dailies tend to qualify, undermine, or efface the messaging engineered by the party. It is the way in which these perhaps predictable representational patterns are complicated by Danielle Smiths publication efforts, however, that gestures toward a deep contradiction between the party and the people in whose names they act. While celebrating the average Albertan and the mythological spirit invested therein, Smith and the Wildrose nonetheless appear to lobby ambitiously at the level of elite political and business discourse, catering to the very voters that their own interpretive frameworks seek to discredit. An in-depth interrogation of this assertion is unfortunately beyond the exploratory ambitions of this paper, but may nonetheless serve as an important point of critique or departure in subsequent studies of resurgent Albertan populism and the ideological discourses to which it gives rise.

Works Cited: Basen, I. (2009). A Schlemiel is the Elephant in the Room: The Framing of Stphane Dion. Canadian Journal of Communication, 34(2), pp. 297-305. Bos, L., Der Brug, V. & De Vreese, C. (2010). Media coverage of right-wing populist leaders. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 35(2), pp. 141163. Breakenridge, D. (2011, February 28). Opposition parties right on the money. The Calgary Sun.

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 17 Retrieved from LexisNexis. Butovsky, J. (2007). Phony Populism: The Misuse of Opinion Polls in the National Post. Canadian Journal of Communication, 32(1), pp. 92-102. Canovan, M. (1999). Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy. Political Studies, 47(1), pp. 2-16. Fahey, A. C. (2007). French and Feminine: Hegemonic Masculinity and the Emasculation of John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Race. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 24(2), pp. 132-150. Fort Mac ethical oil capital of the world. (2010, September 18). The Calgary Sun. Retrieved from LexisNexis. Fraser Institute. (n.d.). Who We Are: Fraser Institute Senior and Visiting Fellows. Retreived from http://www.fraserinstitute.org/about-us/who-we-are/staff/senior-fellows.aspx Hollar, J. (2010). Tea Party vs. U.S. Social Forum. Extra!, 23(9), p. 5. Kauffman, B. (2011, January 28). Ex-cabinet minister wanted to avoid distraction. The Calgary Sun. Retrieved from LexisNexis. Lewis, J. (2001). Constructing Public Opinion. New York: Columbia University Press. Mazzoleni, G. (2003). The Media and the Growth of Neo-Populism in Contemporary Democracies. In G. Mazzoleni, J. Stewart, B. Horsfield (Eds.) The Media and NeoPopulism: A Contemporary Comparative Analysis. Westport: Praeger. McNair, B. (2007). An Introduction to Political Communication (2nd Edition). London: Routledge. Roth, P. (2011, February 26). Wildrose pens balanced budget. The Calgary Sun. Retrieved from LexisNexis.

Neo-Populist Rhetoric 18 Sinnema, J. & Kleiss, K. (2011, February 26). Snelgrove boasts of favorable response to his Alberta budget; Wildrose says its plan would have saved $900M. The Calgary Herald. Retrieved from ProQuest. Smith, D. (2002, December 12). Democracy in Alberta. The Calgary Herald. Retrieved from ProQuest. Smith, D. (2002, December 26). Reviving democracy in the republic of Alberta. The Calgary Herald. Retrieved from ProQuest. Smith, G. (2011, February 19). Wildrose Alliance sugar-coats realities of privatization: union. The Edmonton Journal. Retrieved from ProQuest. Thompson, G. (2011, February 6). Every party wants a Danielle Smith. The Calgary Herald. Retrieved from ProQuest. Wildrose Alliance. (2010). Meet Danielle. Retrieved from http://wildrosealliance.ca/leader/meetdanielle/ Wildrose Alliance (2011, March 3). Danielle Smiths remarks to the Wildrose Edmonton Leaders Dinner. Retrieved from http://wildrosealliance.ca/speech/danielle-smithsremarks-to-the-wildrose-edmonton-leaders-dinner/ Wildrose Alliance. (2010, October 27). Danielle Smiths remarks at the 2010 Calgary Leaders Dinner. Retrieved from http://wildrosealliance.ca/speech/danielle-smiths-remarks-at-the2010-calgary-leaders-dinner/