Harper Must be Fuming

September 17, 2008 at 11:23 pm (Canadian Politics) (Canadian Politics, Ezra Levant, Gerry Ritz, Harper, Listeriosis, Politics)

Yea, this won’t be good.

Political fallout of crisis will be death by 1,000 cold cuts, agriculture minister quipped.

When told about a new death in Prince Edward Island, Ritz said: “Please tell me it’s [Liberal MP] Wayne Easter.

Two quips regarding deaths from the listeriosis outbreak? He’s basically dug his own grave. If Harper doesn’t fire him, then he’s giving the Liberals and NDP a free pass to gobble up ground on him coming up to this election. And even if he does fire him, both campaigns are going to be talking about this for weeks. Especially when there’s the other issue of Harper filling his war room with people like this,

Levant saw “youthquake”, the term he used to describe what he identified as a conservative youth movement of the 1990s, as similar to the 1960s civil rights movement except that instead of being enslaved by racism, his generation was “enslaved by debt” and, in order to liberate itself, society needed to dismantle elements such as trade unions, the minimum wage, universal health care, subsidized tuition and public pension plans.

Now personally I don’t think that this is going to get much play in the media, especially considering he’s just an adviser to Harper. But the fact he’s willing to surround himself with a person whose views would probably very much alienate a good number of Canadians and fill his cabinet with an agriculture minister who is apparently as politically astute as a ferrt is not very telling of Harper’s judgement in the people he associates with in his party.