Given the current feuding between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the media, this might not be the thing one would expect to hear from someone in the media business.
But it's hard not to feel bad for the Conservatives' grassroots base in the wake of this Senate mess.
Admittedly, the contempt with which Harper views the media is hard to stomach. Harper thrives on an us-against-them mentality. In fact, it's become a very effective way tool in to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that he appointed Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau - all of whom were removed from the Senate last week for their questionable expense claims.
Harper's narrative has become all about the biased media and opposition pursing the Conservatives because it was the Conservatives who did their job by kicking these Senators out. And many Conservative party members have eagerly taken their cue from Harper.
But when such conflicts occur in politics, it's helpful to have a long-term perspective.
The first long-term perspective is that every governing party makes the media its scapegoat. To the delight of the party faithful, former NDP premier Roy Romanow went to great lengths to trash the media at annual Saskatchewan NDP conventions.
It's also helpful to remember that people get involved in politics because they have a commitment and passion accompanying their beliefs. Of course, they will never to totally objective or even rational about perceived criticism from the media and others. Of course, they will often feel under siege.
But it's helpful to understand what the Conservative party base - many of whom were old Reformers - were once so passionate about. It's here where one feels a bit sorry for them during this Senate mess.
A quarter century ago, Reformers like Preston Manning, Deborah Gray and Elwin Hermanson were talking to everyone who would listen about how the West wanted in. And the key to getting in was an equal, effected and elected Senate.
This was the passion of Reformers. It was not necessarily an easy sell, because it flew in the face of Brian Mulroney's mainstream Progressive Conservatives who were rather content with the status quo. This was also, supposedly, the passion of a young political advisor to Manning by the name of Stephen Harper.
Their opportunity came with the demise of the Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives. From places like rural Saskatchewan, the Reform rose to Official Opposition albeit with little hope that this regional party could ever form a federal government on its own.
But new hope for their ideals did come a decade ago with the merger or Reformers and old Progressive Conservatives into the new Conservative party that contained the values of both.
The new Conservatives gained power and dismantled the hated long-gun registry and the Canadian Wheat Board. However, when it came to Senate reform, Harper seemed to abandon his old values.
Harper did not support provincial Senate elections, even though governments like Premier Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party passed legislation to do so. Instead, Harper appointed more Senators than any other previous Canadian prime minister - including Wallin, Duffy and Brazeau whose appointments seemed to have more to do with their ability to fundraise than anything else. This wasn't exactly the "values" of either the old Reformers or Progressive Conservatives.
That Harper's own handpicked chief-of-staff Nigel Wright was forced to resign after covering the expenses of Duffy says much about both the abandonment of those values and how close this Senate mess is Harper, himself.
So here we are today, with Wall and others moving legislation last week to support abolishing the Senate rather than attempting to reform it. The dreams of old Reformers of a better confederation through an equal, effective and elected Senate now seem to be in tatters.
Notwithstanding the misplaced anger at the media that old Reformers-turned-Conservatives have, it's hard not to feel sorry for them.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
