Tuesday, February 24, 2009
It was the best of speeches, it was the worst of speeches.
They may not have called it the State of the Union, but that's what it was--an update one month into the Obama administration about what they've gotten done, and what they plan to do next, including fixing the economy, reforming healthcare, rebuilding our financial regulation system, and improving our infrastructure. All delivered in the classic Obama style that's hard to argue with.
(I will confess to a bit of a guilty pleasure moment: watching Senator Chuck Schumer stand up and glare across the aisle at the Senate Republicans when Obama mentioned the budget deficit.)
Not that some people didn't try to argue. So how did Governor Bobby Jindal do in presenting the Republican response? Well... to be blunt his performance was panned even by his own base. And the TV pundits? Some of them may have been thrown off by him invoking Hurricane Katrina as a reason to vote Republican. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: "Ah. I, ah... eh.. Buh... ba ba, ba... I know I'm paid to talk for a living... I'm incapable of doing what I'm paid to do right now. I'm absolutely stunned." This was shortly followed by Chris Matthews, who looked about ready to cry after Jindal finished, delivering a withering list of the ways in which Jindal's speech differed from reality. Most notably by pointing out that all the bad things Jindal railed against happened under Republican government.
2 comments:
Chris Lee's statement about the President's speech was another example of how deeply Lee doesn't understand the crisis we face. He again said the markets' reaction proves the stimulus plan is not the way to go. But didn't the market go up yesterday? Aren't there lots of other factors that affect the markets (zombie banks, anyone?)? The stock market is too volatile and fickle to be basing any kind of policy on. More shallow thinking from Mr. Lee, who seems more concerned with people's stock portfolios than their jobs.
Bobby Jindal doesn't have to compete with President Obama; he has to compete with Sarah Palin. He offered red meat to the party's shrinking base by repeating empty platitudes without offering anything in place of what he's against.
Chris Lee is in comfortable lockstep with his party elders because he probably feels that he can't do any worse than Tom Reynolds, and look how long he lasted in office?
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