What's remarkable about Stephen Khan's farewell to the Progressive Conservative leadership race -- and almost certainly from the Progressive Conservative Party as well -- is the passion of his fierce critique of both the state of the party and fellow candidate Jason Kenney.

Khan is a Progressive Conservative and there will be no Progressive Conservative Party if Kenney wins the leadership race, he told me bluntly yesterday. "He has been clear. He doesn't want to be the leader of the PC Party. He wants to form a 'unity' party."

'I have as much interest in joining the Wildrose 2.0 Party as you do."

Optimistically billing themselves "the common sense centre," Alberta's provincial Liberal Party launched its contest yesterday to find a permanent replacement for interim Leader David Swann, the party's sole MLA.

The slogan for the Alberta Liberal leadership race -- which will run from today until March 31 -- is definitely better than anything the Alberta Progressive Conservatives have come up for their effort to replace their interim Leader, Ric McIver, which alert readers will recall is also under way.

As an aside, it must be noted that the governing New Democratic Party does not have a leadership race under way at the moment, seeing as its leader, Premier Rachel Notley, cannot be accused of having botched the last Alberta provincial election on May 5, 2015.

The story is not likely to get the attention it deserves amid the uproar inevitably surrounding the shocking results of the U.S. presidential election, but the two women campaigning to lead Alberta's Progressive Conservative party both withdrew from the race yesterday. Both were associated with the more socially progressive wing of the former governing party.

Sandra Jansen, sitting MLA for Calgary-North West and a former minister in premier Alison Redford’s cabinet, said in a news release she was quitting because of harassment and intimidation. Social conservatives associated with the campaign of former Harper Government cabinet minister Jason Kenney are said to be the culprits.

The surprise shouldn't be that Alberta's Wildrose Party went Full Trump at its annual general meeting in Red Deer Friday night and yesterday. It should be that anyone's surprised.

Still, mainstream media were agog at this turn of events. To give credit where credit is due, several journalists actually used the T-word to describe both Wildrose Leader Brian Jean's bleak fantasy about the state of Alberta's society as we near Halloween 2016 and the Tea Party policy prescriptions set out for his party by its members.