Mitch Daniels Deliver the GOP Response to the State of the Union
Uploaded by PBSNewsHour on Jan 24, 2012
Most opposition Party responses to State of the Union addresses are dreadful. The ideas are dull and partisan, the language stiff the performance embarrassing – Nancy Pelosi and Bobby Jindal stand out in this regard. Daniels is the exception and well worth the 11 minutes to watch if you missed it.
These two men, Obama and Daniels, with their remarks, made clear the stark contrast between the objectives of main stream Republicans and the Administration – I believe that Daniels and not the President represents the objectives of the nation’s independent center. I think this is what we want Mitt Romney to say as he battles the President and I think we have now heard what the President will be saying.
The President is a skilled and practiced orator, especially in comparison to the practiced but not so skilled Romney or the unpracticed Daniels but facts and substance are compelling too. This will be a fight for the center and candidate Obama’s oratory gave him victory over both the far better candidate in the Democratic Primary and aging professional in the 2008 election race. He did it again last night. Gone was the vitriol and most of the class war. What he said and proposed sounded perfectly reasonable.
We have to hope that the center of the nation is listening. The President’s opponent must be as clear in the contrast of policies as Governor Daniels.
· The President talked about jobs and spending government money to create jobs. The issue is economic growth which is how jobs will be created.
· The President suggested many reasonable small-beer ideas that all involved spending more money. He never mentioned the continuing massive deficits except to say that there had been a reduction of $1.5 trillion – nothing about the ongoing $1.3 trillion or the record $15.3 trillion national debt which is now 101% of GDP.
· Most of us are disgusted by the Bush wars paid for entirely with borrowed money. Senator Obama was certainly a major critic of this practice. But now that we are removing all troops from Iraq – there was no mention of the abject failure of the Administration to negotiate an extension of our Status of Forces Agreement there – the President calls the reduced Iraq expenditure of borrowed money “savings”. He wants to spend half that “savings” on construction projects – but absolutely not on the pipe line which is the most shovel ready project in the nation. With a federal budget deficit of $1.3 trillion at the moment, President Obama proposes to somehow use the other half of our Iraq “savings” to pay down our debt. This is the kind of accounting Bernie Madoff used.
· As has been the practice of this Administration, the President again implied that whatever our fiscal problems, we simply need to tax the rich. He says he is not practicing class warfare; that this is simply about “fairness”. The point is to get people arguing about whether or not it’s class warfare in order to keep people from talking about the nation running deficit which no amount of taxation on the rich will resolve.
· The single greatest contribution to the deficit is entitlements. The single biggest contributor to the unaffordable national safety net is the rising cost of medical care. The President mentioned neither. No one should be elected President unless that candidate is honest about these two things.
President Obama has to be replaced because he has failed to lead us out of our most important national problems. He has refused to tell us the simple truth and, in fact, has misled the public about the true national priorities and the economic facts they represent. Despite his campaign promises, he has divided us and tried to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others. And finally, the President blatantly tries to blame his results for his failure. It’s the President’s job to lead Congress, via the bully pulpit, to do the right thing. He has failed and says it’s Congress’ fault – they won’t let him lead. By blaming Congress, he clearly admits his failure.
We cannot know whether any replacement of the President will be any better. But if we hope to ever again have an effective government, we’ll have to begin by demanding simple accountability. President Obama failed, therefore he must go, along with as many incumbents as we deem also culpable.
Full Text: Obama State of the Union Address
ABCNews, Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Full text: Mitch Daniels' GOP Response to the State of the Union Address
USA Today, Wednesday, January 25, 2012
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