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But beating the NDP won’t be so easy, as Jean and Kenney surely know.

The shape of the new UCP will mean everything. It can’t just be a vehicle for running over the NDP. It has to be something that transports Albertans to a better place.

Will it be right wing, centrist, crackpot, sane or some mush of all those elements? Can it be credible, sensible, modern and, most of all, tolerant and welcoming?

The smartest strategists of this victory know that both old brands are damaged. The PC rap for arrogant entitlement lingers on. A whiff of extremism still trails Wildrose, despite Jean’s constant effort to deodorize the party’s shaky record on gay rights and other social issues.

As speakers such as Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt said at the Red Deer event, the UCP is an opportunity to shed these taints while creating something new and different.

But Fildebrandt himself showed how rough the road to that goal could be. Two hours before the Wildrose vote was announced, he told me he will never support Jean as leader, no matter who is or isn’t in the race.

My tweet about that spread through the room like a stink bomb. Bad form, some said, to inject divisiveness on a day when the movement seems united.

But Fildebrandt was at least being honest. He wants what he calls Liberty conservatism. On Monday, he’ll be sitting in a legislature room with progressive PC MLAs such as Richard Starke and Rick Fraser, for the first meeting of the joint party caucus.

Photo by David Bloom / Postmedia

If they feel swamped by the Wildrose right wing, they could leave this imperfect union. Today’s enthusiasm for the UCP is no guarantee of long-term stability.

That Monday meeting will be historic. Never before have people elected under two party banners suddenly declared themselves members of a new one.