Ahern and Higgins

"You have a failed ideology, you have the most hopeless policy that I ever heard pursued by any nitwit. You are a failed person, you were rejected and your political philosophy has been rejected and you're not going to pull people back into the failed old policies that you dreamt up in south Kerry when you were a young fella. Now go away."
Bertie Ahern to Joe Higgins, Dail Eireann, June 21st 2006. (free reg. req.)

Well, perhaps we'd expect a little better from the Taoiseach. I don't really disagree with anything he said, but it sounds like the sort of thing Joe Higgins would come out with (i.e. in words I read elsewhere this morning "compensating for a lack of articulation with vehemence".) And it can't be good to sound like that.