We'll have more later, but for now here are some reactions to President Biden's State of the Union address last night.
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
...Biden used the august occasion — and used undisciplined Republicans as foils — to display his own vigor, sense of humor and aura of command. Behind him, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) appeared at several moments to try to shush the most voluble Republicans, perhaps knowing the clash wasn’t going well for his party. [snip]
And if they thought they had a punching bag in Biden, they were wrong. They have a puncher instead.
President Joe Biden, at the ripe age of 80, came out with ample vim and vigor in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address and proceeded to mop the House floor with the howling, discombobulated remains of the Republican Party.
Preaching populism and leaning hard on his noted skill as the empathizer-in-chief, Biden bounded through a speech that acknowledged the nation’s struggles while remaining unerringly optimistic. He went off script regularly, parrying Republican lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the whole party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.
I’ve never seen anything like it in a State of the Union speech – they ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff...
A loose, masterful President Joe Biden gave a surprisingly entertaining State of the Union address Tuesday night, and never more so than when he was directly engaging with Republicans. After an early dig at Republicans who vote against infrastructure spending only to ask for projects in their district—“We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking,” he said—Biden really went for it on the debt ceiling and, in particular, Republican plans to hold Social Security and Medicare hostage to raise the debt ceiling.
Biden started by detailing how we got to this point on the debt ceiling—how the national debt rose under his predecessor while Congress voted three times to increase the debt limit. “Tonight, I’m asking this Congress to follow suit,” Biden said. “Let us commit here tonight that the full faith and credit of the United States of America will never, ever be questioned.”
And he was clear about why that’s a question mark right now: “Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage—I get it—unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” Biden said, accurately. “I’m not saying it’s a majority—“
Republicans did not like hearing this truth, and loud booing broke out, and Biden went way off script, inviting them to contact his office for copies of the specific Republican plans to do just that. “I’m glad to see, I’m telling you, I enjoy conversion. You know, it means if Congress doesn’t keep the programs the way they are, they go away. Other Republicans say—I’m not saying it’s a majority of you, I’m not even saying it’s a significant number, but it’s being proposed by individuals. I'm politely not naming them, but it's being proposed by some."
And then he reeled them in. “So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books, right?” Cheering broke out.
Michael Steele, former RNC chair
“Republicans for a long time have been talking about owning the libs,” Michael Steele said. “They got owned tonight by Joe Biden. He stood his ground. He laid out his agenda. He was very clear. He took the hecklers, and he made America see what he's been trying to convey in a way that they probably had not seen or heard before.”
Steele then pointed out the repercussions of the speech.
“And I thought for him; it was a very good night,” Steele continued. “I was watching and reading conservatives, and certainly MAGA folks on my Twitter feed just lose their mind over everything. It is that the complete package? Just the repartee back and forth. The clarity of laying out what he did. I mean, the moment on Social Security is going to be in a loop.”
We'll have more reactions later in our "Tweets of the Day."
(Photo: via Reuters)
