In 2011, Michele Bachmann delivered an alternative “Tea Party” response to the State of the Union. In 2012, Herman Cain performed that duty. This year, it is Rand Paul’s turn. It’s a strange phenomenon. Bachmann attempted to upstage Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s official Republican response, while Cain competed with Paul Ryan. In those cases, you could see the distinction. But, this time, the official response is going to be delivered by Marco Rubio, who is a Tea Party-endorsed politician himself. In other words, Tea Partiers are delivering both the official and the alternative Republican response to the State of the Union speech.
This puts Rubio in the surreal position of being simultaneously claimed and disowned by groups like Tea Party Express.
“We are giving a voice to the tea party movement when the mainstream media and the Republican establishment wants to write us off as dead,” said Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express. This is the third year in a row that Kremer’s organization has sponsored the tea party response…
…”We are proud that Marco Rubio is giving the official Republican Party response because he is a tea party conservative and one of our own. But the Republican Party doesn’t necessarily speak for all conservatives and the tea party movement has its own voice and this is our chance to be heard.”
Republicans, including Tea Partiers, seem very conflicted about Marco Rubio. They sense that he is a rising star who might be able to win the White House one day, perhaps in 2016. They don’t want to harm him or disown him, but they really don’t support his effort to create a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented Latinos living in this country. They should be celebrating that one of their own is delivering the official Republican message, but they still feel compelled to trash that message and offer a more militant one.
Rand Paul, on the other hand, is only vaguely more representative of the GOP than his father was. People say that he is likely to run for president in 2016, and he probably needs to do that if he wants keeps his father’s organization alive. But following in the footsteps of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain is not a smart political move for anyone who actually wants to win.
Please tell me that no reputable, mainstream media outlet is going to give the Tea Party any air time. Obviously, right wing outlets will probably fawn all over them, but that is to be expected. This whole dueling response thing is just absurd. I just find the whole thing quite ridiculous. Somehow, I doubt that if a comparable situation appeared on the left, that any equivalent deference would occur.
Time to give Code Pink an outlet.
Hell, we almost never see a member of the Progressive Caucus on the teevee or get media attention for their Caucus’ official Federal budget proposals, particularly since they come to balance much quicker than Ryan’s and represent more popular policy positions to boot. So, maybe we should take baby steps before we look to give Medea Benjamin some time, although Code Pink is certainly less nutty on policy than the TEA baggers.
That said, I agree that it’s shameful that the TP gets any airtime for their yearly hatefest they call a SOTU response. C-Span, CNN et al. should let ’em run their lies on Fox and online broadcasts.
They should be celebrating that one of their own is delivering the official Republican message, but they still feel compelled to trash that message and offer a more militant one.
That doesn’t matter, if you believe the GOP has any idea how to play 11-D chess, or something.
This response to the SOTU is proliferating into a clown show.
Did Cynthia McKinney ever deliver the “Progressive Democratic” response to a Clinton or Bush SOTU? Dennis Kucinich? Any other lefty showboat?
The idea of responding to the State of the Union began when the President at the time, despite all precedence, began partisanizing the SOTU. Thus began the postmodern SOTU.
That would boggle those who saw the SOTU as an objective report of the conditions in the nation made to Congress as an act of accountability by the President.
But where there’s a microphone or a television camera, politics very rapidly declines into kabuki.
So the public is faced with a dilemma. Horn 1: backroom deals in which politicians deal with some degree of honesty, even if the honesty of thieves. Horn 2: meaningless kabuki that seeks to emotionally move public opinion.
TEA Party vs. Tea Party is the logical extension of Joe Wilson (R-SC)’s clownish juvenile interruption.
What the SOTU has become is the only opportunity the public has to force Republicans to symbolically applaud the Union by applauded a black Democratic President.
And they hate it with a passion.
Yes, we need someone to deliver a response to the Tea Party response to the Republican response to the State of the Union address. I’m not sure who it should be, but there are plenty of options. If anything other than pure narcissism entitles the Tea Party to a response, it’s that they represent a certain percentage of the population, so you can pick pretty much any constituency that’s at least as big. Vegetarians? Left handed people? Doctor Who fans? It doesn’t really matter.
Yes, we need someone to deliver a response to the Tea Party response to the Republican response to the State of the Union address.
Hmmmm….there’s the seed for a Monty Python sketch in there somewhere. This whole response to the response to the response thing just begs for comic absurdity.
Hah, this is EXACTLY the sketch I was thinking about when I commented. I’m never sure who gets the Python references here. Monty Python was big in my “formative years”. Sort of “The Simpsons” of the mid to late 70’s, I guess. Got to meet Michael Palin and Graham Chapman at a screening for The Life Of Brian at a local college back in about 1979 or 80. Very cool for me. But hey, I guess I’m kinda weird that way!
Let me see if I can do this embed thing here…
The idea of responding to the State of the Union began when the President at the time, despite all precedence, began partisanizing the SOTU. Thus began the postmodern SOTU.
I assume that was the patron saint of the Tea Party, Ronald LowIQ Reagan himself?
I do remember in 1982 seeing the networks air a prepared TV ad for the Democrats as their response to Reagan’s state of the union address.
Did it happen before that?
Looks like LBJ drew the first one in 1966.
Fodder for Mad Magazine’s “Joke & Dagger Dept.”
Rand Paul, on the other hand, is only vaguely more representative of the GOP than his father was. People say that he is likely to run for president in 2016, and he probably needs to do that if he wants keeps his father’s organization alive. But following in the footsteps of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain is not a smart political move for anyone who actually wants to win.
I don’t see how it matters all that much whether he delivers the official GOP response or the TB response: either way, it puts him in the direct gaze of a lot of the GOP-friendly television audience who’ve so far only heard odds and ends about Paul, but who have no idea who he is in his own right, and may actually have him confused to some degree with his father–who is also greatly misunderstood on the right.
Once TV audiences get a good, undiluted look at what Rand Paul brings to the table, he’s finished. Even Rick Perry looks sophisticated in comparison. Remember how quickly talk of presidential ambitions for Bobby Jindal disappeared in the wake of his lousy SOTU response in ‘009? and that was just for being boring, unfocused, and non-telegenic, not for being Teabagger stupid.
Jindal may be showing some signs of at least partial recovery from his disastrous outing, but the best Paul can hope for is to hang the TB albatross more firmly around his neck, like Cain and Bachmann did before him. He can’t cut it as a serious politician, so he has no choice but to go Full Stupid.