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In the legislature, Wildrose was cheery with the eight remaining PC MLAs, co-operating with them on some issues and even giving over questions to them.

Gosh, it was adorable.

Also doomed.

In an op-ed piece in the Herald Thursday, Jean says the experiment has failed. As he surely knew it would.

Jean was never trying to hold hands with PC Interim Leader Ric McIver. He and Wildrose tried enticing PC party members and conservatives, in general, to join his party, to shrink PC support to a nub.

However, many PCs aren’t anywhere near the point of folding an outfit that won 12 straight elections over 43 years in office.

Jean had to be able to say he tried, though.

There were a few Wildrose-PC pub nights and meetings between riding associations.

They mostly helped both groups realize it wouldn’t work.

PCs saw that a lot of Wildrosers just wanted to obliterate them. Wildrosers felt the PC establishment — or what remained of it — was implacably hostile.

Many Wildrosers still harbour great bitterness toward the arrogance of the late-regime PCs, especially over the floor-crossing scandal.

And your average urban PC supporter views Wildrose adherents as scary right-wing nutbars, the demented heirs of Social Credit.

In his Herald article, Jean goes right at these divisions.

“A major obstacle that lingers is a suspicion that some elites in the PC establishment would just resume old habits built up in the post-Klein era that caused Albertans to turn against them,” he writes.