'Thugs' in high places

[CHIMO]

Did Paul Martin absorb the lesson Joe Clark had taught 25 years ago, namely that it's wrong for a minority prime minister to govern as if he had a majority? It was particularly wrong for Clark to try to do so. He simply didn't look like a majority prime minister.

At the recent First Ministers Conference the thugs were out in full force lending an air of "tension" to the proceedings. The Martin government's "inner circle" infuriated the Quebec delegation. Said a Quebec official: "We're a federalist party. We still have the impression think there is a separatist opposition. My sense is that they don't get it. I don't think they get the fact that they're a minority government. They are arrogant. I'm not talking about the prime minister, but his staff."
Martin's vaunted thugs are making problems for him. They insulate him from reality. Their rough-and-tumble tactics don't go over well with the Quebec federalist government or with Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government in Ontario. In this sense Paul Martin is governing like he has a majority but the fact is he's rubbing a lot of noses the wrong way by trying to do this trick.
Arrogance and thugs show up a Martin who never believed – nor did his inner circle tell him – that he would wind up with such a precarious minority. Martin doesn't really like trying to wheel and deal with the provinces as equals, but he does like chairing televised conferences. As chairman he sees the use of his business talents coming to the fore and giving him an aura of competence he may not in fact deserve.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_zolf/20040921.html