The Occasional Observer

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...