(America’s greatest political cartoonist Jeff Danziger’s website)
.
Okay, the Repubs were gonna give up being ‘the Stupid Party’, just as soon as they stopped fighting over whether the Robber Barons or the Teahadists deserved the blame for the 2012 debacle.
But then (speaking of Bobby Jindal) it was announced that Marco “Savior of his Party” Rubio would be delivering the Republican rebuttal to what the horse-race touts are breathlessly hyping as “the most important State of the Union of his entire presidency.”…
And that Rand “Mitt Romney Lite” Paul would be delivering the “Tea Party response” on behalf of the Tea Party Express.
Per Paul Constant:
… The response to the State of the Union is one of the hardest speeches a politician can give: They look tiny compared to the grandeur of the SotU, and they’re forced into an opposition position, which doesn’t generally appeal to people. And if they fuck up the optics of the moment, it can take years to politically recover. It’s really rare for someone to come away from the response speech looking stronger than they went in, but if any politician can do this, it’s Rubio.
Not with Senator Aquabuddha (Dixie’s Great White Hope for 2016) fidgeting in the background, he won’t. I think it’ll be a pretty good metric of whether the Repubs are actually ready to give up mainlining the Stupid if the news media, and/or Fox, find an excuse to cut away from Rand “Hi, Dad” Paul’s rebuttal-to-the-rebuttal. And as of right now, I don’t expect that to happen.
amk
Stephen Colbert: Republicans must embrace Hispanics unless science finds a way for Hispanic women to give birth to old white men.
max
if the news media, and/or Fox, find an excuse to cut away from Rand “Hi, Dad” Paul’s rebuttal-to-the-rebuttal.
If they were willing to give up the stupid…. they’d ask Gates to deliver it.
I think the actual metric will be how much help the courtiers try to give to Rubio. Clearly they want all this deplorable obvious racism to go away so we can get back to the subtle racism and the tax cuts, so I’m figuring Rubio would have to officially declare himself
the Anti-Christ … no they’d probably think that was great, more power for themin the running for head of Al Qaeda to get them to pan the speech. Of course, then somebody would say it was brave of Rubio to declare his support for international terrorism and slashing entitlements.max
[‘Going for Slick this time.’]
amk
wasn’t rubio the original teabaggers’ dahling ? how did paul spawn steal it from him ?
Raven
For all the pearl clutching whiners from the other night:
The Red Pen
How is Rand Paul “Mitt Romney Lite”? He’s more like twice the crazy of Ron Paul with none of the heart.
Applejinx
@Raven:
Aww- that’s kinda sweet. I hope it works. No SHIT she was high, and it’s certainly not impossible for that to be ‘her bottom’. Imagine if you were in a blackout. “I did WHAT?”
Imagine how incredibly unsafe you’d feel while compulsively getting high again (as is usually the way of it). You’d be like ‘ooh shit, what next?’.
I hope she gets help- people have actively sought help over less.
Baud
If Rubio doesn’t piss on himself while on TV, he’ll be deemed the heir to Reagan by the media for the next four years. The bar for Republicans is so low.
Maude
The state of Connecticut is closed. They had two to three feet of snow.
They had 82 mph wind gusts on the coast yesterday.
The storm hit sporadically on Long Island. Some places got a lot, some not.
Here, we got around 4″ of snow.
Supposed to be windy today.
Suffern ace
This is what I wake up to? I’m sure when the republicans win again, there will be a DLC response, a progressive caucus response, one for Northeast Senators who caucus with the democrats…
Face
Will the emessem broadcast the teatard rant, thus legitimizing Teh Crazies, or just fapp relentlessly to the Cuban Comeover and ignore Sen. Paul?
Suffern ace
Ah yes. I see. I’m now on the edge of my seat. If the speech goes wrong, we as a country are doomed! The only thing I can think of is that Obama must fill his magic speech with actual curses and spells, because the critical fifth state of the union speech draws near. The one that is neither too near the beginning nor too far from the end!
Gin & Tonic
@Maude: I see something like two feet of snow outside; it was 18″ last night. It’s still snowing. But I have electricity. That’s the bright side. The not-so-bright side is that the dog wants to go out, which means I have to get dressed and shovel.
pablo
I respectfully beg to differ! Mike Luckovich!
http://blogs.ajc.com/mike-luckovich/2013/02/06/27-luckovich-cartoon-anchors-aweigh/
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: Living in the south has a few benefits. A few years ago, I had to shovel a path to the lawn for Miss Moxie. We had two inches of snow.
Baud
@Suffern ace:
Lord, that’s dumb. And they wonder why their circulation is declining.
Baud
Why is George Will, of all people, supporting Sherrod Brown’s attempt to break up the banks? Do the banks not invite Will to the type of cocktail parties that the climate change deniers do?
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ace: Obviously, some kind of Goldilocks “just right” speech is necessary to avoid DOOM.
Suffern ace
@Omnes Omnibus: certainly this speech won’t be constrained by politics, unlike those speeches he’s given before or will give in the future. He can let his freak really fly just this once.
MikeJ
Tottenham 1 0 Newcastle
Scott
The Tea Party folks should be forced to run for office under that flag, not as Republicans. They want all the benefits of being members of a major party, but none of the constraints.
RSA
@amk:
I’m having a hard time figuring this one out. Here’s a Tea Party Express press release showing that Rubio was their top choice for VP last summer. Paul came in 12th out of the 12 names listed. So did Ryan, West, Santorum, Palin, Bachmann, Walker, Huckabee, Christie, Gingrich, and Cain all turn down the chance?
Robin G.
How are the New English BJers? From Minnesota I was kind of mocking the panic, but three feet of snow is a big deal anywhere. Hope everyone’s settled in.
The new weather normal out east really sucks.
WereBear
@Scott: I thought “All benefits, no constraints” was their platform.
Gex
@Scott: it tells you all you need to know. They’re too fucking stupid and lazy to actually become a party. These brave “fiscal conservatives” will simply freeload off of people who have done the work. For all their attempts to sy they aren’t Republicans, they could have tried to run as omething other than Rs.
Greg
Sorry, the what? Response? Is that like one of these Saturday radio speeches they did 20 years ago? What? Still? Wow, and this response is important, you say. Affect their careers for years. Huh. Who’d of guessed.
Baud
With Obama on the left and Rand Paul on the right, Rubio proves to be the true political moderate. /msm
MikeJ
@Greg:
It certainly hurt Jindal. Don’t expect hear about what a waste of money volcano monitoring is.
aimai
@Robin G.:
So far its blissful, though bizarre. Its terrible for the plants to rocket from 40 degrees down to freezing, no snow (too dry) to tons of snow (good for the plants, difficult for us). Personally–I love it. Our Children had snow days starting yesterday morning so we all hunkered down and I spent the day cooking or hanging with them. Today will be mroe of the same. We only have a small city lot size lot to shovel, we have plenty of supplies, the town looks awesome, and we will visit our shut in elderly neighbor. Its blissful.
geg6
Gloria, Marlo and Chris Hayes. I’m swooning.
You watch naow, mkay?
Gin & Tonic
@Robin G.: Two to three feet most places. The 60-80 mph winds overnight took out a lot of power lines, though. Over 400k customers out in MA, for example.
Scott S.
I think it’s perfectly possible for Rubio to pull a Jindahl — everyone acts like he’s the bee’s knees, but I’ve never actually heard him speak. All his reputation seems to revolve around him being attractive and Cuban.
And with Paul bringing the crazy juice in his own teabag response, it means Rubio will be the least entertaining person giving a speech that night. Can’t build up good publicity for yourself when you’re only the third most interesting speaker — or fourth or fifth, depending on how disruptive the teabaggers get during Obama’s speech…
arguingwithsignposts
@Suffern ace: Goldilockian modesty has a nice ring to it.
Suffern ACE
@MikeJ: it didn’t do much for Daniels, although whether or not Bachmanns tea part rebuttal hurt or helped her cause…anyway, having now spent 10 minutes perusing the list of rebuttalists from both parties since 1966, it would appear that no one who has given a rebuttal has ascended much higher than a cabinet post.
gogol's wife
@Gin & Tonic:
We have electricity, but we’ll never see our cars again. They’re just gentle rises in the snowdrifts.
MikeJ
@Scott S.:
Rubio chokes on the rebuttal, puts Christie back out front for the republicans. Christie then falls in 2016 to the curse of the trochee.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/01/10/eliot-weinberger/romney-the-curse-of-the-trochee/
Gypsy howell
@Scott S.:
Didn’t Rubio give a pretty good speech at the RNC? Or am I misremembering?
arguingwithsignposts
Serious history question: How long of a history does the “response” to the State of the Union have? I know the SotU is in the Constitution, but I can’t imagine these responses were given prior to the advent of at least radio. Any historian types want to chime in on this, rather than me going to Google for a standard response?
Suffern ACE
@arguingwithsignposts: 1966. Cause I’m snowed in, I have no particular life at the moment. And the whole Spanish language response is not new either, even for republicans.
Baud
@MikeJ:
And Obambi!
Southern Beale
Who is going to broadcast the Tea Party response to SOTU?
Rand Paul can’t do worse than Michele Bachmann, remember that disaster? When she was looking in the wrong camera the whole time?
I already know what Marco Rubio is going to say. He’s going to spend the bulk of his time fearmongering about the deficit. Take that to the bank. “Crushing debt is immoral, we’ve sadddled our grandchildren with blah blah …”
And as soon as Republicans get elected, suddenly “deficits don’t matter.” Go figure.
Scott S.
@Gypsy howell: Well, it’s possible — I don’t believe I watched any of the convention speeches. Still, there’s making a speech at a convention notably short of charisma, and then there’s trying to follow up the most charismatic politician in the country. If Obama brings his A-game, Rubio could look like amateur night at the comedy club in comparison…
Southern Beale
@Baud:
True, ‘dat. And he’s got the coveted ethnicity that Republicans are desperate to embrace.
mai naem
The SOTU is on the same night as the Westminster Show final day. WTF? I’m supposed to miss the dog show to watch the dog and pony show?
Anyhow, the Republicans have nobody who can match Obama. That’s all there is to it. Obama is really a superstar at this kind of stuff. The only person who can beat him at this is WJC and luckily for us WJC is a Democrat.
And, oh yeah, the hacker’s email which had Jeb Bush saying that Bush Sr. helped Clinton get over his “sordid” reputation. Really, dickwad? Who the hell are you to talk about sordid with your cokehead daughter and shopaholic wife? And what about your moron brother who wiped his hand on WJC’s shirt because he had handled those ewwww hands of Hatians? Not to talk about the trillions he cost in war and hundreds of thousands of people killed in an unnecessary war. Jeb has some balls. A-hole.
Southern Beale
@MikeJ:
Wow I have never heard of that before. And thanks for my new Scrabble word: “trochee.”
Chyron HR
@MikeJ:
Shit, does that mean Romney might get to come back again in 2016?
JPL
Ellen DeGeneres gave quite a monologue on BSA postponing the decision on whether or not to allow openly gay members…
link
MikeJ
@Chyron HR: We can only hope.
the Conster
@Robin G.:
Can’t get out to start cleaning up, just west of Boston.
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6: Kills me that I had to leave just a few minutes into the program to take my car in for scheduled maintenance. If it weren’t so hard to get a Saturday appointment, I would have cancelled and rescheduled just to watch UP!
P.S. Why am I still having to reenter my nym and email every time I comment? What has happened to FYWP’s memory banks?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Rand Paul put his money on the wrong horse and he’s going to ride it into the ground.
What I want to know is whether or not the Objectivists will join the TP whining when no one except FOX broadcasts Rand-boy’s SOTU response.
Ash Can
No way do the Republicans stop being the “stupid party,” at least for the foreseeable future, because the entire premises of their policies are garbage. They’re cronies of big business who have been co-opted by the radical extremists of the John Birch Society. They want to do away with free elections, keep women and minorities oppressed, brainwash children so that they won’t rock the boat as they grow up, and loot public funds and steal labor to enrich themselves and their friends. And, naturally, their policies reflect this. And the kicker is that, whenever they say they need to change, they immediately insist that it’s not these putrid policies that need to change, it’s the style in which they’re articulated. And this is why Rubio will put his freshest face and best combover forward and do nothing more than repeat the same old crap, and quite possibly fall on his face like Jindal did. They. Have. Nothing. And unless and until they truly, as a party, address this, none of their Great Hopes, white or otherwise, will distinguish themselves favorably in any SOTU reply.
Citizen_X
@Suffern ace:
Obama should bring his shotgun. Maybe he can fire it into the ceiling, President Mountain Dew-Camacho style.
Citizen_X
@Suffern ace:
Obama should bring his shotgun. Maybe he can fire it into the ceiling, President Mountain Dew-Camacho style.
ETA: Sorry bout the double post. I blame Tunch.
Hill Dweller
Brennan made Rubio look pretty stupid during his confirmation hearing. Did that get any play on cable?
maya
Instead of the SOTU speechifying why don’t they just see who can remove the Sword [of American Exceptionalism] from the Stone [of Budget Deficits and Moral Decay]?
GregB
So, are the wingnut base really going to embrace Rubio doing the first ever bi-lingual rebuttal?
Are they going to be screaming ‘speak Enlgish!’ at the TV while he’s doing it?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@maya:
That’s Rubio’s job. He has to explain to an increasingly ungrateful public that austerity, unaffordable medical coverage and the concentration of wealth are good for us.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@GregB:
“Goddamn teevee’s on the Fritz. Everything’s in greaser talk.”
Ash Can
@GregB: I’m wondering the same thing. There’s no way the GOP base is going to look favorably upon one of their pols speaking anything but Good White Amurrican, and the people whose language Rubio will be speaking will be saying, “Buddy, your policies blow a big one.” How is this a winning strategy?
arguingwithsignposts
@Ash Can: I didn’t know this was going to be bilingual. I have never heard a speech given in two languages that sounded good. Unless he does one, then the other.
Baud
@Ash Can: @arguingwithsignposts:
I wonder if he’ll have a different speech in Spanish. Maybe he’ll say, “Ignore everything I just said in English.”
Smiling Mortician
@Baud: Ah, the Yasser Arafat Gambit.
woozywinks
I was a reporter covering the Florida Legislature when Rubio was the house speaker. He always gave the same canned speech for every occasion — his family escaping Castro in Cuba. Democrats would applaud politely. Republicans would stand up and cheer. Sometimes the speech was totally inappropriate for the occasion, like an inner-party squabble over the appointment of judges, but he gave it on impulse.
it was very much a Chauncy Gardner experience of “Being There” or even the emperor has no clothes. The guy is not all that bright, but that has never stopped other politicians.
NotMax
Maybe Rubio will try to garner coverage by channeling his inner Natalie Wood and giving the first response in song.
(Yes, I know his heritage is Cuban, not Puerto Rican.)
Ash Can
@Baud:
@Smiling Mortician:
LOL! I thought immediately of Yasser Arafat too. But pulling an Arafat wouldn’t work for Rubio because of the degree of bilingualism of his audience, and because of the similarities that exist between English and Spanish (“Ah don’t speak wetback, Mabel, but it shore sounded to me like that boy just called our Mitch an imbecile.”}
MikeJ
@NotMax: Marni Nixon.
FlipYrWhig
Rubio is in a race against the clock. His hair is getting thinner by the week. When your calling card is your supposed youth and handsomeness, that matters.
handsmile
@Ash Can:
It’s a winning strategy if your objective is to win and maintain the affection of the Village media. Having been anointed this week as the latest “GOP Savior” by Time Magazine and gracing its front cover, Rubio wants that momentum to continue. In February 2013, he cares fuck-all about the GOP base.
Also, Chris Christie doesn’t deliver bi-lingual speeches. Christie, far more than Obama, is Rubio’s real opponent at the moment.
FlipYrWhig
@woozywinks: wasn’t it later revealed that his family left Cuba before Castro ever did anything?
NotMax
@MikeJ
Yeah, but Nixon is still not a name a Rrpublican politician prefers to invoke in public.
NotMax
For all you Northeasterners, six recipes using snow.
Gin & Tonic
@FlipYrWhig: You liberals with your darn facts and stuff.
johnny aquitard
@GregB: I’m thinking they’ll be weighing the outrage vs outreach of that, while trying to convince themselves just having the optics of a cuban-american giving the rebuttal in real murkin english is hispanic outreach enough.
mir13
“I didn’t break the lamp, Ma. The TeaParty did”
“KKKKarl, stop blaming everything on your imaginary friend.”
“I didn’t break the lamp, Ma. The Establishment Republicans did.”
“AynRandPaul, you know monsters don’t exist. Exercise personal responsibility, Bootstrap!”
The difference between Ran-dee and MasMachoMarco? About the same as the difference between AynPaul Rayn and Todd Akin: place of birth.
These fundraising motherfuckers. Can’t govern, can’t shoot ’em.
handsmile
@FlipYrWhig:
Why are you bringing up such old and discredited news? Like most liberals, you must be the real racist.
Sure, the far-left Washington Post revealed in October 2011 that the good Senator’s family actually emigrated from Cuba in 1956 rather than barely escaping the ravages of the Commie dictator Castro three years later. Born in 1971, how was little Marco to know that these brave tales of family derring-do were mere bedtime stories? How could he be held responsible for making them part of his political biography? How dare they be called “embellishments”!
For your edification and shame, here is the “GOP Savior’s” response to such outrageous slanders upon the honor of his family and himself. No doubt you will be surprised that it was published in another lamestream media rag, Politico:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66567.html
Scuffletuffle
Just got in from clearing my driveway here in Springfield MA. Crazy snow, almost bare in spots, then drifts 2 1/2 – 3 ft deep in others. Street still not plowed and it looks to be at least 1 1/2 ft deep out there judging from the trucks going by. Car alone took a half hour to dig out, the snow drifted in all around it. Had to shove the storm door open on the back porch to get out and won’t be touching the front, its drifted up to four feet high against the front storm door.
trollhattan
Since we evidently don’t have sufficient home-grow’d lunatic Republicans–what, an assemblyman packing a loaded gun checking into his flight isn’t loony enough?–we’re bringing in more from out of state.
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/09/5176924/jack-ohman-perry-goin-to-california.html
Goodhair, good neighbor?
Chris
@handsmile:
One could almost be forgiven for thinking that his family was trying to escape the ravages of the right-wing dictator Batista. And then for wondering whether all our good little friends south of the border are, in fact, “the spiritual equivalent of our founding fathers” as Saint Ronnie always claimed.
Jay C
@handsmile:
Word. The Villagers are the real audience for Rubio’s response speech: and we know that they will certainly be giving it a lot more weight than it probably will deserve. As always, the main point with Washington media is to keep the “horse-race” narrative alive and well, and do their double-dog-damndest to try to deflect or obscure any and all shortcomings with the Republican Party or Republican policies (or lack thereof).
Business As Usual Inside The Beltway……
James E. Powell
I’m not ready to say the Republicans are dying; they have too much money and there are still a lot of ignorant bigots who vote. But the fact that they consider Rubio their savior reveals how very weak their stable of candidates really is. Who would it be if it weren’t him? More Paul Ryan?
Another Halocene Human
@woozywinks: Oh wow. If you see this message, please keep posting on BJ and dishing about Florida pols, mkay?
How does that speech sound in light of revelations that his family left before the Revolution, ie, they are the wrong kind of Cubans?