I’d like to share my thoughts on the substance and form of Marco Rubio’s SOTU response to President Obama.
The Substance
It must take weeks, if not months, for a President and his team to prepare the SOTU speech. Yet, the opposition party response is delivered minutes after. How can we ever expect the response to match the address? I doubt that the opposing party gets an advance copy of the speech. But, nobody cares, because the response is just a chance for the opposing party to list its talking points. This has never been more true than last night.
Senator Rubio’s SOTU response was an opportunity for the GOP to continue to spread its usual lies and distortions through a Hispanic mouthpiece. Yes, Marco Rubio is the GOP’s rising star since last November, when the tea-infused party woke up and smelled the [Cuban] coffee.
President Obama’s speech was unifying, logical, conciliatory—he even lauded John McCain’s past work on climate change. He spoke about not needing a bigger government but a smarter one. Senator Rubio’s response was to say that President Obama believed in bigger government—one that taxes, spends and controls more. He also said that President Obama believes that a free-enterprise economy is the cause of our economic problems, a line so laughable that it makes me want to cry.
He went on to criticize Obamacare and repeat the President’s ideas on energy, immigration, and education while making them sound that they were the GOP’s. He also claimed that President Obama loves to blame the debt on President Bush while “…President Obama created more debt in four years than his predecessor did in eight.” This is an outright, debunked lie. As reported by Forbes, which has shown that President Obama is the smallest government spender since President Eisenhower. Forbes, not The National Enquirer!
So, Senator Rubio’s response to President Obama’s SOTU speech had the substance (and stink) of caca—that’s s#%t in Spanish. I think it’s important for the GOP to know this word, considering that they’re now dying to be bilingual.
The Form
Senator Rubio’s speech started well enough, thanking our Armed Forces and being gracious enough to congratulate President Obama on “the start of his second term.” He also looked alive. None of that robotic performance we got from Gov. Bobby Jindal back in 2009.
No, Senator Rubio looked human, and nothing could be better proof than his level of perspiration. He was literally sweating buckets. I have a theory about this. He’s accustomed to using political doublespeak, as most politicians. He’s probably even becoming adept at GOP oppositespeak (the art of meaning the exact opposite of political slogans). But this is the first time in Senator Rubio’s career that he has had to lie so flagrantly, to such a large audience, with such high stakes for his political future. I think he was suffering from Traumatic Lying Stress Disorder.
No wonder he had to reach for that bottle of water. But, why did he have to make it look like he was stealing something? Guilt. It’s another symptom of TLSD. Never heard of it? That’s because I just made it up (the term, not the condition). I hope you like it, although I have to say that I’m humbled by the quick wit of those tweeps who came up with: Water-gate, Waterboy and my all-time favorite Gulp Fiction.
May God bless them, and may God bless the United States of America including those, like Senator Rubio, who will say (and do) anything to disunite it.
