Emerson recognizes it, too

Apparently, you don't have to be a Liberal to notice that the most significant Conservative motivator, and the only thing that really unites them, is their hatred of the Liberals. David Emerson has noticed this, too, and has cited it among his reasons for being unhappy with his current job as International Trade Minister (that whole "being dogged by protests everywhere he goes" thing being another.)

Now, there's two schools of thought on this whole Emerson matter that could be true. What's true in either case is that he switched parties, and he admitted outright that, had the Liberals won, he'd still be a Liberal. What you can take from this is that he's remarkably unpartisan and is concerned with serving his country in cabinet, or conversely, that he's remarkably unpartisan and unprincipled. I'm inclined to believe the former, considering he could be making much more in the private sector. Still, it is pretty audacious to admit that your party switch had nothing to do with principle and everything to do with getting a cabinet job.

Regardless, Emerson is really saying what all us onlookers are thinking. The Conservative government is remarkably dictatorial, they're being very unprincipled, and above all, their best and only excuse is the one I noted previously - the Liberals did it too. And again, the appropriate response is that the Conservatives promised not to.

What Emerson is saying, "They really hate the Liberals," is obvious to anyone who spends any time on Canadian politics-oriented internet message boards. They are practically overrun by partisan Conservatives these days, and all of them, all of them, say the same thing - the Liberals are worse; the Liberals did it too; whatever the Conservatives do doesn't matter because (it's my party... no wait, that's not it...) the Liberals did it too, and it's worse when Liberals do it because (they're the enemy... no wait...) they're Liberals. This isn't something that's hidden, it's glaringly obvious on the boards. The one thing, the only thing, that unites these Conservatives is hatred of the Liberals, and the one thing that really seems to motivate them is to take revenge on the party that kicked their asses for twelve years straight.