"Mike Duffy is a creampuff, and has loyal friends in every party"

...and you were doing so well.

It doesn't matter if a conservative shill has "friends in every party"; he's still a shill. That's like talking about all the awesome friends Tom Friedman has; well, yes, of course he does, he's part of the chattering class, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the agenda!

Despite whatzisname's protestations that this guy or that guy or the other guy at CTV is a personal friend of some other guy that knew Jean Chretien, it's pretty clear that they have an agenda. And whether or not they're friendly to the notoriously agenda-free Chretien of years past, it's pretty certain that they're no friends of the Liberals now.

Indeed, if they were friends of Chretien before and are friends of Harper now, that suggests that said agenda principally consisted of backing whoever was likeliest to deliver them power, influence, and those monopolies over rebroadcast that Canadian private broadcasters rely on to succeed. And how is that somehow beyond the pale? Hell, it's trivially obvious!

It certainly doesn't mean that progressives should trust these guys as far as they can throw them.

Edit: Ah, I forgot this. The chief criticism of the Liberal party among progressives, including both those within the party and those in the NDP, is that that the party is filled with too many careerists: those who have no real political philosophy or beliefs, but simply joined the party in order to forward their own careers and their own desires for power. Chretien's crew, for better or worse, included no small number of these people--though so did Martin's--and that's part of the reason the Liberals are so adrift today.

If those careerists have moved on to CTV, their personal former loyalties to Chretien don't matter; they're still going to back whichever political party best aids their careers. And, yes, that's the Conservatives. CTV knows where its loyalties lie, and they lie with the party that will rewrite broadcast laws for their benefit and cripple public broadcasting.

(Re-Edit: Seriously, how the hell does a prominent blogger not understand the whole "workin' the ref" concept?)