Liberals looking for scapegoats
Alexander Panetta
Canadian Press
Monday, January 23, 2006
MONTREAL -- With Paul Martin's hopes for a second mandate in tatters Monday night, and Liberal party recriminations well underway, the Liberal leader's closest advisers were indignant at suggestions they might be responsible for a campaign gone wrong.
They've long blamed the Jean Chretien administration for the sponsorship scandal that dragged them down throughout their 25 months in office.
Now, the news media and the RCMP are the latest additions to their black list.
Martin's senior aides are privately fuming at the Mounties' decision to abandon a standard no-comment policy right in the middle of an election campaign.
Liberal election strategy was knocked off kilter by the RCMP's stunning -- and very public -- announcement of a criminal probe into alleged insider trading at the Finance Department.
And advisers accuse the media of an obvious bias in favour of Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
They say Liberal promises -- such as a $4-billion plan to reduce tuition -- went virtually unreported while the Conservatives scored a daily hit with their announcements.
"How many Canadians have even heard about our tuition plan?" one senior Liberal lamented.
But many within Liberal ranks feel no sympathy for those complaints, saying Martin's campaign was dysfunctional from the start.
He hammered away on the Kyoto accord without putting forward a plan to meet its clean-air targets. He talked about national unity but offered no new ideas for bringing the country together.
He used same-sex marriage and abortion to paint the Tories as rabid right-wingers -- while conveniently ignoring the dozens of his own MPs who sided against his policy.
The media spent eight weeks pointing out those glaring inconsistencies while ignoring many of Martin's attacks -- or worse, dismissing them as fear-mongering.
One Liberal MP said his leader should have projected a more positive and prime ministerial message by focusing on his economic platform.
"What are we doing talking about the notwithstanding clause?" he asked rhetorically Monday. "One-third of your caucus voted against same-sex marriage -- so get off your high horse."
Liberals are also wondering why they delayed so many of their policy announcements until the second half of the campaign.
The strategy was supposed to unfold like this: draw attention to Harper's weaknesses before Christmas, and kill any momentum he might have had by unrolling Liberal promises in January.
It didn't quite work out that way.
"We began our campaign after Christmas and, by then, it was over," said one well-connected Liberal. "We were constantly on the defensive, constantly reacting to Harper's announcements."
But of all the things that grated on Liberal nerves, one thing reigned supreme.
Many of the Chretien-era Liberals who helped the party win three majority governments say they were essentially forced to the sidelines.
"I have never been so disconnected from party headquarters in any campaign in my life. And it's the same story across the country," said the Quebec operative.
"They pushed aside our most experienced organizers and replaced them with young guns who didn't know their butts from their elbows."
One of the country's best-known Liberals used more diplomatic language to express the same grievance. He said the party must now reach out to the hundreds of grassroots organizers who were sidelined during -- and after -- Martin's leadership run.
"In this campaign we had 60 per cent of our people sitting on their hands," he said.
"We need to reunite the big Liberal family."
One longtime Quebec organizer spent Monday working the phones, co-ordinating rides to polling stations -- and planning the ouster of Martin or, at the very least, his entourage.
"We have to clean house," said the party operative, who asked not to be named. "This campaign was one bungle after another."
© The Canadian Press 2006
hmmm...I see to recall me making some of these points myself and being told there was no truth to them 
Canadian Liberals looking for scapegoats
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