About That Republican Response

Watching  the Republican Response to the State of the Union by Gov. Mitch Daniels last night felt like a flash-back to when Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the Republican Response to an earlier Obama State of the Union. There was so much anticipation among conservatives that we were going to see something great -- a break-through performance by a rising Republican star.

And then we watched with horror as Jindal did that deer in the headlights thing, thereby dashing our hopes (and nearly, his career, until the BP Oil Spill gave him a chance to show how to govern under pressure).

Mitch Daniels didn't perform quite as badly as Jindal, last night, but nonetheless was disappointing.  He looked visibly nervous.  It is a hard setting, to be sure:  an empty space in Indiana with no crowd to work, and none of the grandeur of a Joint Session of Congress.

I still wish Daniels was our nominee because of his extraordinary record as governor, not because of this speech.

Sen. Rand Paul Responds to SOTU

We knew that Rand Paul would be an unconventional senator, and so it comes as no surprise that he was not content to let Rep. Paul Ryan make the sole Republican response to the State of the Union (or Rep. Michelle Bachmann's shadow response, for that matter).

Sen. Paul has done his own response on YouTube. As of this writing, it has received more than 3500 hits. I'm gonna guess that not all those hits come from Kentucky. Paul has sent out at least three press releases and a weekly address and he has only been sworn in for a few days. Make no mistake, he is building a national base of support.

It's an outstanding response, focusing on Paul's greatest strength: his steadfast opposition to big government and deficit spending. It is striking for amount of substance and seriousness of purpose he manifests.

Here's the link.

McConnell's Take on Obama's SOTU

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has a reaction to President Barack Obama's State of the Union -- aside from the responsive smirk when Obama promised to invited the Republican leadership for "monthly" meetings:

The President is always welcome at the Capitol, especially at a time when there is so much important work to be done on behalf of the American people.

The President talked about jobs tonight. This is a welcome change in focus after the President and his administration spent nearly an entire year pursuing a partisan health care plan that would have spent trillions of dollars we don't have rather than on a plan for getting Americans back to work. I'm hopeful the administration's new focus on the economy will lead it to say no to more spending and debt, more bailouts, and more government.

The President's words about the importance of deficit reduction are timely. The times require that we build upon these modest proposals. Americans are concerned about what kind of country we will leave to our children. The administration could address this concern right away by directing unspent Stimulus and TARP funds to pay down the federal deficit, and it could implement a true spending freeze. It could also assure families and small businesses that their taxes will not go up at the end of the year, as currently planned.

The administration could also reassure Americans who are still rattled by the attempted Christmas Day bombing by vowing to make a priority of preventing the next terrorist attack, not treating captured terrorists like common criminals so we can place them in a civilian court. Americans have a right to find out everything captured terrorists know in order to prevent future terrorist attacks.

Americans are concerned about government spending, debt, jobs, and keeping the homeland safe. They expect us to focus on these core issues until we get them right. In the year ahead, there is much work to be done, and the task before us is clear. We need to get Americans back to work and remain focused on keeping America secure and putting our nation back on the road to prosperity. Republicans look forward to working with the President on these shared goals.

Trey Reacts to Obama's SOTU

Here's Secretary of State Trey Grayson's reaction to President Barack Obama's State of the Union:

As he always does, President Obama delivered a great speech tonight. However, his proposals amount to mere lip service to the massive problems facing our country and do little to address our skyrocketing deficits and national debt.

We need a spending freeze right now – not next year. We need across the board cuts to the double-digit increases in discretionary spending we’ve seen this year over last year. We should hold spending at FY 2009 levels – before the massive increases took place.

Further, it’s disheartening that while the President talks about making American businesses more competitive and creating jobs, he advocates policies like a massive national energy tax that will make our businesses less competitive and drive jobs overseas, especially in coal-dependent states like Kentucky. We must all remember that the government does not create jobs. Government should get out of the way and free America’s small businesses to innovate, grow and create jobs.

I hope the President is serious about wanting bipartisan cooperation, and I hope Democrats in Congress will stop their go-it-alone, government-knows-best approach and begin to consider more common sense, conservative, fiscally responsible approaches to finding real solutions to our problems.