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In hindsight, it was always an odd marriage, Alison Redford and Alberta: the cosmopolitan former UN-bureaucrat and human rights lawyer, at the head of the tough-talking, politically ruthless, grit-under-the-nails Everyman province.

Upon being elected leader of the Progressive Conservatives in 2011, Ms. Redford was heralded as a beacon of modernity and progressivism in the heartland; one national newspaper even headlined her win with an elitist sigh: “Alberta steps into the present.” As events this week revealed, Ms. Redford is accused of being something else entirely: entitled, unpleasant and even, claims one fed-up member who stormed out of her caucus, a “bully.”

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She really doesn’t have the common touch

For the first time, the carefully cultivated image of Ms. Redford as a classy woman of the world was publicly tarnished. She had never won over the public, or her party, with a common touch. Some of her fans thought that commendable, believing she represented a sophisticated and high-minded leadership, unlike the more folksy Ed Stelmach and Ralph Klein, who preceded her: More Barack Obama than George W. Bush. Today, as the Alberta PCs face a new leadership crisis over high-priced travel and entitlements, those same qualities of worldliness and sophistication are coming off more like someone who is arrogant and out of touch with the average Albertan.