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“I think it’s set the whole concept back 20 years,” Manning says.

Photo by Leah Hennel/Postmedia

Indeed, it has gotten to the point where many conservatives seem to believe revenue neutrality is literally impossible: No politician of any stripe can be trusted not to put his thumb on the scale. Manning has been thinking a lot lately about populist instincts like that.

“The instinctive reaction to a populist uprising on the part of the political establishment and its media allies is usually to immediately denounce it and its leadership in the strongest possible terms — characterizing it as rooted in ignorance, prejudice, irrationality, emotionalism, and extremism,” he writes in a forthcoming piece.

“(This) is probably the worst of all possible reactions because it fuels the very thing it professes to abhor. What is really required of the establishment if populism is to be prevented from going rogue, is a sincere and concentrated effort to understand and address its root concerns and causes.”

Political parties like Reform can steer such uprisings away from extreme solutions, Manning argues — no to western separatism, yes to Senate reform. He likens it to drilling a relief shaft into a rogue oil well before it blows its top.

What's most unfortunate about this is this whole concept got tied just to carbon

In Alberta, certainly, the roots these days seem plain enough: This country can’t get pipelines built. By way of solution, Manning envisions a new Alberta government joining forces with others to put the screws to Ottawa. “I think there’s a consensus that a country this size has to be able to get its resources from the interior to (tidewater), and the federal government has the constitutional power to declare the right-of-way … a ‘work (for the general) advantage of Canada’ under Section 92 Constitution,” he says.