POTUS Leftovers: Pres. Obama’s Reelection Speech, aka State of the Union, Was Rehash of Previous Speeches (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on January 25, 2012
Barack Obama's SOTU address was a rehash of previous speeches
We happily eat leftovers for dinner at our house — which increasing numbers of American families are doing these days during the worst economic recession we’ve seen in decades — but I don’t want to listen to Barack Obama leftovers. Which, for the most part, last night’s State of the Union address/partisan reelection speech was.
So, I chose instead to do laundry and watch some drama reruns.
Looks like I didn’t miss all that much.
Click here for the full SOTU transcript. Washington Post did some fact-checking, and has posted a list of “fact-challenged” statements that the president made about Iraq, Afghanistan, job losses, health care, bailouts, taxes, and other dubious claims. The Lonely Conservative notes that AP reported that Obama gave a “wish list,” not a “to-do list” in his speech, and on what he said about health care and other pressing issues, she wrote, “He didn’t just stretch the truth about health care. He stretched the truth, fantasied or lied on everything from war spending, green energy, taxes, immigration and more. The one thing he was totally honest about was his intention to continue to work around Congress any chance he gets.”
Politico points out that the president’s reelection/SOTU address registered at the 8th grade reading level (it ranked at the third lowest score of any State of the Union address since 1934), and some unflattering evaluation comes from the New York Times, State of the Union? More Like State of the Campaign:
Republicans have good reason to believe that President Obama’s goals in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night were more partisan than presidential.
Mr. Obama has shifted into full-bore campaigning. He expects little from Congress this year beyond the extension of existing payroll tax cuts. His highest-profile initiatives are designed to enhance his re-election prospects.
Where Republicans stand on shakier ground is in their assessment of Mr. Obama’s ultimate destination. On arguably the principal conflict between the two parties — over paring long-term debt and deficits — the president can still stake a stronger claim to the political center than his Republican antagonists.
Polls show that Mr. Obama’s budget positions are closer to those of most voters than the Republican positions are. His ultimate goal, advisers say, remains a bipartisan deficit deal along the lines of the one he nearly negotiated with Speaker John A. Boehner.
“He’s into full re-election mode, which is populistic in tone,” observed Alan K. Simpson, a Republican who was co-chairman of a presidential debt-reduction commission with Erskine B. Bowles, a Democrat.
Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard noted the déjà vu quality of Obama’s SOTU — Haven’t We Heard this Before?:
Obama 2010: “It’s time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs.
Obama 2012: “Colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down.”
***
Obama 2010: “And we should continue the work by fixing our broken immigration system.”
Obama 2011: “I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration.”
Obama 2012: “I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration.”
***
Obama 2010: “We face a deficit of trust.”
Obama 2012: “I’ve talked tonight about the deficit of trust…”
***
Obama 2010: “We can’t wage a perpetual campaign.”
Obama 2012: “We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign.”
Americans are split on Obama’s performance over the last year. His average approval rating for 2011 was 44.4 percent, according to Gallup. That’s a big drop from the heady days of 2009 (57.2 percent), but not that big a decline from 2010′s 46.7 percent.
Here’s a brief clip from the POTUS SOTU address:
From Michelle Malkin, Obama’s Green Robber Barons:
Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the “rich”? Well, brace yourselves. You’ll be hearing much more from the White House about the “wealthy few” who aren’t paying their “fair share” as Obama’s re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery.
As usual, there’s always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who’ve reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice.
Obama’s State of the Union address defiantly pitched a new round of clean energy spending orgies to help the “middle class.” But how have the serial bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies of several federally subsidized solar companies — all under Obama’s watch — helped anyone but an upper-crust elite of eco-crats and their lobbyists and consultants?
Malkin cites many examples, ranging from bankrupt Solyndra, bankrupt Beacon Power, bankrupt SpectraWatt, and Nevada Geothermal.
Smitty at The Other McCain weighs in on the SOTU and the GOP response:
I thought that BHO’s third SOTU installment worked best as humorless stand-up. In between victory laps for ventilating Osama, Obama basically said nothing, with a few breaks to blame Buuuuush.
The GOP response in an Indiana war memorial was better, but not as much as it should have been. Mitch Daniels was basically Mitt Romney, without so much Tom Brokaw. I don’t want to hear about the ‘safety net’. Social Security and Medicare are cancer. Thus, we can be moderate in how we treat the patient, and not try to kill the society as we purge the cancer. But purge it We. Absolutely. Must. The safety net is neither affordable nor a federal task, and the GOP would sound orders of magnitude less idiotic if it would strive for liberty instead of accommodation with the cancer.
Here’s the opening to Indiana’s Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels’ response to the SOTU, with the full video below:
“The status of ‘loyal opposition’ imposes on those out of power some serious responsibilities: to show respect for the Presidency and its occupant, to express agreement where it exists. Republicans tonight salute our President, for instance, for his aggressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11, and for bravely backing long overdue changes in public education. I personally would add to that list admiration for the strong family commitment that he and the First Lady have displayed to a nation sorely needing such examples.
“On these evenings, Presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true.
“The President did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse: the percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today.
“In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
“The President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.
“Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight, and those so discouraged that they have abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one has been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.
“As Republicans our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.
“In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.
Gov. Mitch Daniels Delivers the GOP Response to the State of the Union
Just one of the many “stretching the truth” claims made by Obama last night:
OBAMA, asking Congress to pay for construction projects: “Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”
THE FACTS: The idea of taking war “savings” to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand. For one thing, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been largely financed through borrowing, so stopping the wars doesn’t create a pool of ready cash, just less debt. And the savings appear to be based at least in part on inflated war spending estimates for future years.
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