Just how they like it

The Star reports on the Cons' focus groups to test public reaction to their income-trust turnaround. But it's their reaction after the fact that says all one needs to know about the Con view of the Canadian public:

(A spokesman for Jim Flaherty) said the government was satisfied with the level of knowledge about the issue and its implications that the public had received through media reports "and we didn't need to add to it."

But an account from the focus groups, conducted by Ipsos-Reid, found awareness of the trust issue to be "very low."

Not that it should come as much surprise for the Cons to hold the view that the less Canadians in general know about what they're doing in office, the better off they'll be. But it still takes an added degree of contempt for the Cons to publicly make the statement that a "very low" degree of knowledge is entirely satisfactory. And hopefully voters will surprise the Cons by maintaining full knowledge about their own lack of respect next time they go to the polls - and matching it in kind.