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Last week, Republican leaders announced that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would deliver the party's response to President Obama's State of the Union address. There's a bit of a risk associated with the move -- these SOTU responses rarely provide a career boost -- but Republicans seemed excited to have their "rising star" take center stage.
But late on Friday, we learned there will be more than one Republican response.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will deliver a "Tea Party Response" to the State of the Union on Tuesday, immediately after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) delivers the official Republican response.
Tea Party Express, a political action committee, announced Friday afternoon that Paul will deliver the rebuttal at the National Press Club and that it will stream it live on its website.
Oh, right. I'd almost forgotten that the Tea Partiers like to have their own SOTU responses. In 2011, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) delivered a classic -- remember how she looked into the wrong camera? -- followed by Herman Cain's speech in 2012. The right-wing activists appear to be moving up in the world: now they have a sitting senator helping out.
But for Republicans, this isn't good news at all. What GOP officials want tomorrow night is two competing messages: the president's vision vs. the Republican vision. Rubio's speech, to be delivered in English and Spanish, will be carefully crafted with poll-tested ideas and phrases, intended to help get the party back on track after its 2012 electoral failures.
But there won't be two competing messages; Rand Paul guarantees there will be three. The public won't get a tale of two visions; Americans will hear the president, then a Republican response, then another Republican response. That the two GOP messages will be delivered by two conservative senators who are both likely to seek national office in a few years only complicates matters further.
"I don't see it as necessarily divisive," Paul said yesterday. Care to wager on whether his party's leaders agree?
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I remember when Rand Paul gave his victory speech when he won the GOP primary in 2010. He name-checked the Tea Party nine times, and the state he nominally sought to represent, Kentucky, once.
We've always known who Rand Paul represents. Have the voters in Kentucky figured that out yet?
I pray they have, but I didn't vote for him the first time.
Marco Rubio- the Republican version of "The Monkees"- a pop group created out of whole cloth to entertain the masses.
Remember "I'm a Believer"? Followed up with "Daydream Believer".
And we might note that Rubio was elected as a Tea Party Candidate ...which he appears to have renounced . Another group of chumps manipulated by the Republicans for their votes .
The teabaggers that supported Rubio should ask the evangelicals about all the wonderful stuff GWB did for them after they gave him support in '04
Heeeey, don't disparage the Monkees, they went on to write and record their own critically acclaimed material. The album Headquarters was quite good!
Rubio, I have it on good authority, doesn't write his own stuff and can't sing.
Monkees: 1, Rubio: 0
"Hey, I'm not a musician, man."
Rubio and Rand, the two emptiest suits in the party of empty suits - what better representatives could the Confederates have to display?
After the SOTU the GOP nees to STFU
My goodness, how totalitarian of you. You're the true face of the left, yes?
shooter242
June 11, 2012 at 6:54 am
I’d like to encourage more trollery on left wing sites. Specifically pushback on common memes such as identified by Jonah Goldberg as unchallenged cliches. It can actually work, and it can actually change the course of debate.
For instance, I always challenge “the rich take too much of the pie” meme. There is no pie, no one decides who gets what, and the “pie” is a measure of contributions to a total. Ergo the rich don’t take they contribute. It’s been gratifyingly effective.
Try it you’ll like it. Don’t curse and keep the personal insults to a bare minimum, don’t allow moving goal posts or distractions. Ignore trollish responders, and be four times more civil. They hate that.
Please challenge the "rich take too much of the pie" meme all you want, but handwaving won't do any good since there certainly is a pie (GDP) and the people who decide how it gets divided are those who are getting the most. The obvious evidence is that the bottom half of the population has seen their income actually drop slightly in the last thirty years while those a bit above median income are barely hanging in there. But when you look at the top 0.1% you find that their income has increased almost 300% during the same time. And this during a time when the work of the masses has been a lot more productive than it used to be, but the vast majority of the increased production goes to benefit the top 1%, not the people whose labor produced it.
Handwaving doesn't change reality and that is the reality. And to listen to them whine about how much they sacrifice in income taxes makes you just want to pinch their little heads off. Their incomes, as mentioned, have almost tripled, but their income taxes have decreased during that time. You just want to force them to go Galt so that decent people can clean up the mess they made without them continuously messing up the place again.
A Duet? "You say 'Tomato', I say 'Tomato' ...", Lets Call the Whole Thing Off ...
It would elevate your stature around the nation, something that standing in a hole will never do. But it does hide the fact that you have your short pants on.
That the two GOP messages will be delivered by two conservative senators who are both likely to seek national office in a few years only complicates matters further.
I doubt that the GOP sees Paul as a serious contender in 2016.
But that is the problem for the GOP, of course, isn't it. They've spent a lot of capital pushing the idea of two equal, competing visions, when the evidence clearly shows that the GOP vision is largely a gimmick-riddled giveaway to the rich. They will have a hard time discrediting a second vision from within their own party, now that they have already endorsed the crazy.
I suspect that once again the rational (Huntsman type) candidate will be thrown off the stage and the remaining will be forced to pander as did the pathological liar Willard Romney.
Clown car reservations now being taken.
Hunt hunt hunt he's the HuntsMAN! 'Into Action!' is his cry! /From the forest to the city he will get there in a jiffy to sock Evil in the eye!
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
--CCC
Two visions you say? Are there not more?
I have offered you all an additional vision. It is not mine, it is a new/old school of economics, called MMT.
You, as a group, have decided that I an a crazy guy. Never mind that the dozen (plus) professors that have elaborated it are not stupid (they might be crazy). However you can't call them crazy until you take a good look at their argument.
What they need in Washington is a paradigm shift. This will not be easy. Not with the MSM (I mean LameSM) refusing to let us talk to the nation.
It seems the OWS crowd are against offering a list of demands. I wish they would look at MMT, see that it makes sense, and bury that knowledge for a while until they have more power. I am convinced that OWS is the beginning of the movement that will change everything in about 10 - 15 years. Sorta like the 1st patriots at the Boston Tea Party in 1773 (or there abouts).
Sort of like double vision ?
Like Wow !
That is exactly what the honorable Senator is self accredited to deal with !
Talk about timely self accreditation , whew !
At what point are these "responses" to the SOTU ridiculous?
Bernie Sanders should have a response.
If we're going to give the Tea Party a separate identity, then why shouldn't they be removed from the Republican party for other legislative issues?
Heck. Let's just have 100 responses to the SOTU.
Yes, we always have to hear from the peanut gallery, especially since they add nothing to the conversation except the smoke and mud designed for great ratings, not great government.
The GOP thinks that offering up double stupid is a good thing?
This could well put Fox viewers into a quandary.
I'm from Louisville, and I can't tell you how embarrassed I am about the Kentucky Senators. I lived in Indiana for years, and now I'm so unhappy that the Hoosiers chose Daniels for Governor. Well, here I am in Florida with Rick Scott and Marco Rubio. I don't have any respect for any of those guys. Rubio will not go anywhere in Florida. He will say anything to get himself out there, even if it is untrue. I just can't believe the American people will have respect for any of their comments.
Well Floridians voted Rubio into office along with the other tea-baggers, so stupid is as stupid does. Pick better candidates next time
ridiculous times 2
I'm happy to see the GOP is taking Jindal's advise.
I wonder if Rubio and Rand, (RR..hmm) are going to speak with strings attached. Works for me.
"How I love my liberty, I got no strings on me"
Who will carry the Rand Paul response? The Comedy Channel?
It will be interesting if just for entertainment value alone! And we all know what kind of fool Paul is going to make of himself. Hopefully, both Rubio's and Paul's responses will further show the American public why these people have to be kept out of public office for the real and present danger they pose. America will be watching.
Do the two of them combined have a single-digit, positive-number IQ?
Funny how these response speeches get written before the speech to which they are responding is given!!
In fact, Rand Paul is the Republicans' grave digger. Lovely. A better, deeper ditch is all the GOP needs at this moment in time.
I always wonder if they have advance copies of the Presidents speech. If not, how do they know what he's going to say.
Or do they need to know and just make stuff up.
That.
All we have to do, is package the same old BS in a new brown wrapper....
That should work {:-/
It's a good thing Rand Paul is doing, he is personifying the Civil War. The irony is that the only "good" candidate the Republicans potentially have is Chris Christie, a man of self parody...
I'm making Rice Krispy squares and popcorn balls for the tard-off!
Do the Networks have to carry this stuff? I for one will not be watching. I will watch the President, but there is nothing in the Constitution that says the opposition party gets a grandstand to spew the same old stuff the voters rejected in November. Of course there is nothing in the Constitution about parties.
Democrats need to translate Pauls response into spanish , on Telemundo , immediately after he is done also , have one of our new spanish speaking lady u s house reps lay it out for the american hispanic community , so they can understand once again who the gop are
They'll also need to translate Rubio's "Spanish" speech, since he speaks "Cubano".
By republican standards Paul is correct when he says "I don't see it as necessarily divisive," What he means is that as long as the rest of the republican party goes along with him, then there is no division. Simple, no?
It's the same argument that the repubs have been using all along about their program vs. the Democrats program. Compromise means accepting their program in its totality and rejecting the Democratic program in its totality.
So I guess the repub and teeper response to the SOTU is simply a remake of "Dumb and Dumber" with less talented and less funny actors? Oops, I'd better watch out, or Rand will have one of his people stomp on my head too!
But which of them is which? I think they're already to Dumber and Dumberer.
Please someone explain to me if the Tea Party is so committed to it's own agenda which differs greatly from the G.O.P's platform, why can't the Tea Party just run it's own ticket in elections. It's good enough for the Libertarians and Reform party...correct? Tea Party just strike out on your own and stop hiding behind the "R" on the ticket.
Because they like to win elections...
They see the massive success that Lyndon LaRouche has had running on the Crazier Than Your Weird Uncle Louie ticket, and are unable to top him in complete lunacy.
@Uffdaguy and Lebowsky, the point is that there is zero integrity on the Tea Party side nor the common Republican side of the fence in allowing these extreme nutjobs infiltrate the G.O.P. like they have been allowed to do. One, because it's the very worst sort of pandering and then allowing the party to implode. Two because who can take any "Tea Party" member seriously when they are talking about changing America as they hide behind the "R". Surely people are beginning to take note of this chicanery.
as much as i'd like for competing versions of the republican response Paul is going to do his on the tea party express's website. where it will be seen by tens of hundreds of people. really not the same.