These three corporate stooges are united in their determination
to screw the little guy and suck up to the super-rich.

CALGARY • In public, there is no love lost between Alliance nee-Reform Leader-in-waiting Preston Manning and Grassroots United Against Reform's Demise (GUARD) over ditching the Reform Party for the new-and-improved Canadian Alliance. But behind closed doors, a different, more harmonious, picture is emerging. The National Post has learned of top secret talks between hardline redneck Reformers and opportunistic Alliance adherents on a marriage of convenience that could ensure Manning's Alliance coronation.

Insiders acknowledge that key staffers from Manning's office have "personal approval" from their boss to negotiate with GUARD's Bruce Stubbs, a former Alberta Reform riding president. For face-saving reasons on all sides, these are not called unity talks but "Pragmatic Reduction of Electoral Seat Splitting Through Organizational Networking" (PRESSTON). But this behind-the-scenes initiative has apparently already achieved broad consensus on many previously contentious issues including: core values, election strategy, and the future leadership of the alliance.

With the next federal election as little as a year away, the litmus test of any "alliance" between the two warring factions would be their ability to develop - and adhere to - a joint election strategy. PRESSTON negotiators are quietly elated over the progress they have made in this crucial area. In fact, there is already unanimous consent on the top priority for the upcoming federal horse-race: stealing back their right-wing platform that the Liberals have so sleazily usurped. Both groups have also tentatively committed to contesting the election, no matter how high the Liberals are in the polls.

As one might imagine, the horse-trading has been most intense over alliance leadership. To date, accord has been reached on several key items: the new, merged, reconstituted or existing party and/or alliance MUST have a leader; and despite his neo-conservative credentials, Paul Martin Jr. will NOT be accepted as leader of the alliance.

Perhaps no issue is more divisive than the threat of Ontario domination of a new alliance and the loss of traditional party values. The PRESSTON talks have already borne fruit in this thorny area. A plan has been drafted for both groups to endorse Western Christian Core Conservative Values such as: "guttin' social programmes like a fish," open season on homosexuals and abortionists, zero-tolerance for taxes, mandatory gun-ownership and "privatizin' every damn varmint in Ottawa."

Theological concerns have also been included in the negotiations. So far, they are in accord on the following dogmas: that God is a free market advocate and that no one has a prayer of defeating the Liberals in the next election.