Gerry Ritz needs to resign or be fired

Over the last few days, we have had a number of campaign announcements and none really too controversial but none overly bold either. Probably makes sense considering the fact we are now entering a recession, people want steady policies, not radical changes. However, the one big headline today was Gerry Ritz's comments about hoping the one listeria death in PEI (it turns out no one died in PEI of listeria) was Wayne Easter. I know that some Tories will argue people sometime say stupid things they shouldn't which is a fair argument. However, there is a time for joking and time not for it. An event as serious as several people dying from listeria is no joking matter. I agree with Wayne Easter, that this is not about the comment of Gerry Ritz against him, but his poor handling of the issue. If Harper is the true leader he claims to be, he would fire him. Likewise if Gerry Ritz is willing to live up to his responsibility he would resign. As for how this will affect the polling numbers, my guess is as good as anyone else's, but I am pretty sure the Tories will at least lose some points over this, although how big the drop will be is hard to say. We probably won't know for three to four days as that is how long it usually takes before the full effects are seen. This along, with Ryan Sparrow's comments, and the Poopin puffin point to an obvious flaw in Harper's team. I've always seen him as a nasty partisan who is a bully and usually people like that tend to attract others like that and surround themselves with people like that. Now Harper, can easily switch to a more gentler personality, but if you surround yourselves with others who are mean and nasty don't expect all of them to easily shift gears when an election is called. As for how this will affect the outcome of the election, that is hard to say as we still have 3 and half weeks and lots can happen so as stated earlier anything from a Liberal minority to a Conservative majority is within the realm of possibility. While the Liberals would probably be doing better in the polls if they were more aggressive, I do like Dion's more consensus oriented approach as opposed to Harper's confrontational approach. A confrontational approach may work well politically regretably, but it is not good for the country. Lets hope the public eventually says enough to smearing and mud slinging and instead debates issues honestly and openly in a respectful manner. Just because someone has different political views doesn't make them automatically a bad person. I have friends and even family members from pretty much every political party and I get along fine with all of them regardless of their views and recognize most have good intentions and in fact our views are not as different as one might think.