The Occasional Observer

For S and G, I was just looking over our old casting call posts (which are total classics and I, for one, would love to see the return of...) and came to the following conclusion:

We are all clearly drunk every time we post a comment on this blog.

It is the only logical assessment for the insanity and inane ramblings that are housed within the comment pages (never mind the original posts).

PER-RY!

Is this the guy everyone is hanging their hopes on?

If so, count me in. A secret agent platypus is just what this country needs right now!

On substance, I was cheering (and if you guys follow me on Twitter, arguing with the Perry-haters) at Perry's anti-Fed commentary. On tone, I agree he was too strident. The Wall Street Journal did a good job looking at both aspects of Perry's comments, and determining that, on balance, he gets it. In a way that Romney, Obama, and even W didn't.

It's worth reading the whole article here.

"The media trope of the week is that Mr. Perry is George W. Bush only more so, but he clearly isn't the same on monetary policy. Mr. Bush, who first appointed Mr. Bernanke, was an easy-money, weak-dollar President. He and his former economic advisers still don't understand how Alan Greenspan's policies at the Fed contributed to the credit and housing manias that led to the financial meltdown that caused the GOP's political undoing in 2008.

Mr. Perry seems to appreciate that the Federal Reserve can't conjure prosperity from the monetary printing presses. His articulation needs some work, but we hope the Texan doesn't let media and other criticism deter him from pursuing the argument...

Merely by raising the Fed as a subject, Mr. Perry has sent a political signal to the folks at the Eccles Building to tread carefully as they conduct monetary policy in the coming months..."

To put the bolded in other terms, terms I may or may not have tweeted the night Perry's supposed "gaffe" hit the wires, he delivered "a shot across the bow" of the Fed. Well done, Governor.

and you should too.

Perry's definitely got swagger.

From Politico:

Obama plan: Destroy Romney
Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s re-election campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.

The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for re-election in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.

In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied President Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John F. Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.

“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.

The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s re-elect will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”
…
Romney officials shrug off the tough talk, arguing that there’s nothing Obama can do that will turn the campaign away from functioning as a referendum on his stewardship of the economy.

“There’s so many wonderful ironies here: Obama spent his whole political career perfecting the best argument against Bush 43 and now he’s going to run as 43?” said Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, who also worked for Bush. “They can try anything they want — but this race is going to be about the economy.”
…
They don’t have a choice. Even Obama’s top aides don’t expect unemployment to be below eight percent when next November rolls around.
…
Romney, currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, isn’t the candidate Democrats would most like to face. That honor goes to former Gov. Sarah Palin or Rep. Michele Bachmann, vocal conservatives who may not be able to reach swing voters. Romney’s moderate record as the one-term governor of a liberal state – the target of conservative rivals’ criticism – could also make him a strong general election candidate.
…
The attack on Romney is, to the Massachusetts Republican, nothing new. Senator Ted Kennedy used elements of it against him in the 1994 Senate race, and his former adviser Bob Shrum summarized the current case this way: “You don’t know what he really believes, he’s been on both sides of issues and, by the way, he didn’t create jobs he destroyed jobs while getting rich.”

ht: R 4 '12

I don't know if you recall the speech that British MEP Daniel Hannan gave in March 2009, which excoriated then-PM Gordon Brown to his face. It was, frankly, one of the greatest rhetorical opposition take-downs I've ever seen. It was someone who gets the big picture, and used his words to cut through the obfuscation, triangulation, and quarter-truths (half- would be too generous) of the liberal political classes to lay truth bare.

Well, it's no different here in the U.S. The same type of nonsensical gibberish passes for normalcy in Washington, just as in Brussels and London. Think of Obama's "shovel ready jobs," deficit spending (er, "stimulus", "investment"), tax increases (oops, "revenue", "a balanced solution"), "summer of recovery" (?), use of "default" when even a failure to raise the debt ceiling would not have resulted in any missed payments to bond holders, etc.

Listen to the Hannan speech. Look at Brown, chuckling and embarrassed, towards the end of it. Who is the conservative leader in this country that would be capable of this type of raw honesty, with the insight to see the "big lie," and expose it in a way that is readily accessible to the average listener?



Who could you see delivering this speech on the Senate floor, or at a debate across the stage from Obama, and do it unflinchingly?

I can really only think of two possible GOP candidates, and neither are running at this time. Am I wrong? Is there a hidden gem in the GOP field that I'm missing?

As an aside, the reason I thought of the Hannan speech is that it popped up at Race 4 2012 because Hannan has just endorsed Gary Johnson. He believes Johsnon is the best choice for America if we want a leader who will shrink the government and free the private sector. I have a lot of confidence that Johnson would prioritize those principles, but I don't know that he meets the political leadership test that I'm talking about w/r/t the speech above. Of course, it's tough to vet Johnson's rhetorical chops, since the various debate committees haven't let the man on the stage...