post mortem on the Liberals = typical media missing it

If this is what CBC's Larry Zolph really believes, the Canadian media is missing it worse than I thought.

Here in Mr. Zolph's own words are his thoughts on the pivotal point of the election:

Martin made one particularly fatal blunder. He could have visited the troops in Afghanistan over Christmas 2005, in the middle of the campaigning for the Jan. 23 federal election.

If he had, he would have been the hero of the troops and stolen the campaign momentum away from Harper's one-a-day policy announcements.

Not visiting the troops was probably one of the smartest things Martin did during the election. He at least knew that the Canadian people would take a dim view of any politician using Canadian troops in a war zone as photo-op material. For Martin particulary it would have been suicide.

The history of the Liberal Party since the Trudeaupian Era has been to starve the military and ignore it as much as possible when they aren't trying to turn it into some kind of socialy progressive police force. One need only visit the government controled military museums in this country to get the feeling that warriors are not well respected. Great battles are not recounted, great victories not celebrated, there aren't even any guns on display. Instead there are depictions of nurses, food being delivered, and lots of smiling blue helmets posing with little kids. You have to go to a private museum to see actual pride in the military.

Fortunately this careful official depiction is a lie, as evidenced by the strong performance of the troops to date in Afghanistan. But it is the view of the Liberal Party of what is desirable in a Canadian military man, and it is what they have been working for since the 1970's. Well, when they work at all that is.

Furthermore, Team Martin and the previous Chretien team were making points with vaguely peacenik urban woolly heads by bashing George Bush for his war in Iraq. You can't be blasting the Yanks for being in a war and then run off to be with the troops in your own war, coincidentally fighting in support of those damn war mongering Yankies.

Proof of this thought is the huge aproval Harper has received for his genuine support of the Afghan mission and the military generally. For Martin to go to Afghanistan would have been a cynical lie and a disaster. For Harper to go was a vindication and a triumph. That dichotomy is what killed the Liberals, not Martin dropping the ball.

So what is Larry Zolph thinking? He's thinking Harper and all Conservatives are a bunch of idiots, that's what. He can't understand how the Big Red Machine failed to beat these hayseeds, its gotta be Martin's fault.

He's completely missing the fact that Canadians (outside Toronto anyway) are sick of the Liberal fluffy bunny aproach to the military and terrorism. They see the Americans out there kicking bad-guy ass with all kinds of super duper ass kicking equipment, then they look at our 40 year old helicopters lying upside down on top of 30 year old warships. They see the PPCLI sent to the brown Afghan desert in green uniforms. They see 20 year old soldiers driving Iltis jeepy things ten years older than they are with zero armor protection. They see the Danish Navy hoisting the Danish flag on a Canadian arctic island, and are told we have nothing that can get soldiers up there to do something about it. They see the Canadian Forces renting skidoos because they don't have their own. Worst of all, they know if the Liberals are running the show they are going to keep right on seeing it, because that's what the Liberals are all about. Not just Martin, the whole party.

Wake up and smell the coffee Larry! It's going to take a lot more than clever political deck-chair arrangements and better lying to get the Liberal Party off that reef they drove themselves up on. And Bob "Ray Days" Ray ain't the one going to git 'er done, that is for sure.

The Phantom