The News Caravan

Tag: SOTU

  • ‘He rope-a-doped them’: Democrats celebrate GOP jeers at SOTU

    ‘He rope-a-doped them’: Democrats celebrate GOP jeers at SOTU

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    Schumer said on Democrats’ side of the room Tuesday, “there was excitement” as Biden was “hitting it out of the park.” The contrast with the Republican side of the room, he said, will be “remembered for quite a while, by anybody who watched it.”

    At one particularly tense moment, GOP lawmakers booed the president when he claimed Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset — referring to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) proposal to wind down all laws after five years. Biden went off-script as the outrage from Republicans on the floor grew louder, attempting to clarify “I don’t think it is a majority of you” and finally saying, “So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare, off the books now, right?”

    Schumer said Wednesday “there is no way” to eliminate the deficit in 10 years — a goal of Republican leadership — without slashing Medicare and Social Security, though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did pledge Tuesday that he wouldn’t touch the two programs in the ongoing debt limit fight. The New York Democrat also called Biden “deft” for letting Republicans “walk into his trap” by essentially making them assert to the public they aren’t for cutting Medicare and Social Security.

    “Joe Biden was so deft. He let them walk into his trap. He rope-a-doped them,” Schumer said. “And now all of America has seen the Republican Party say, ‘No, we’re not going to cut Social security and Medicare.’ He did a service.”

    Vice President Kamala Harris called the Republican jeering “theatrical” and applauded the president for being “in command” and staying “focused on the American people” as opposed to “the gamesmanship that was being played in the room.”

    “The president, it’s his nature and it’s his commitment to the American people to work across the aisle,” Harris said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “That’s not going to stop even if some people are cynical about it.”

    Assistant Democratic leader Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.) said Biden’s speech could be a preview for his 2024 campaign for reelection, should he make good on his stated intentions to mount another White House bid. Clyburn added that “it was the best effort I’ve seen” from Biden in a “long, long time,” and praised his “maturity” in responding to the hecklers.

    “I saw in him last night the kind of maturity that the American people would like to see in a president,” Clyburn said. “He took on the hecklers. Let them have their say. Gave them a nice little smile and responded in a very positive way.”

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    #ropeadoped #Democrats #celebrate #GOP #jeers #SOTU
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Sarah Huckabee Sanders attacks ‘left-wing culture war’ in SOTU response

    Sarah Huckabee Sanders attacks ‘left-wing culture war’ in SOTU response

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    In one of her first acts as governor, Sanders garnered national attention for a directive banning the term Latinx across the Arkansas government. In her Tuesday response, Sanders similarly waded into culture war subjects that have animated conservatives in the Biden years, inveighing against “false idols” of the left and other conservative punching bags.

    “That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong,” she said.

    Huckabee also hit the president for his stewardship of the economy and the Biden administration’s handling of immigration policy.

    Those broadsides are not far apart from the depiction of Biden and his fellow Democrats presented by her previous boss, former President Donald Trump, underscoring the lasting impression he has made on the Republican party — albeit with the former president’s sharpest edges shaved off.

    Trump, the only major declared Republican candidate for the White House, released his own short response to Biden’s speech in which he painted a bleak picture of the country and accused the president of allowing illegal immigrants to “storm” the country and letting drug cartels smuggle drugs across the border.

    Trump also highlighted inflation, the rise in murder rates, and said the Biden administration is “trying to indoctrinate and mutilate our children” — a reference to sexual orientation and gender identity issues that have animated the party.

    By contrast, Sanders echoed those same themes, without the same level of rancor and in a way that Republicans have at times sought for in hopes of modulating the former president’s agenda into an enduring coalition. At the outset of her remarks, she referenced her thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatment, as well as her mother’s experience with a different form of cancer, before swiftly pivoting into a condemnation of Biden.

    “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left; the choice is between normal or crazy,” she said.

    Sanders also teased the forthcoming release of an education plan for Arkansas that she said would — if enacted — raise teachers’ salaries, expand parental choice and improve childhood literacy.

    Sanders’ speech stands in contrast to the tone left by her predecessor, Republican Asa Hutchinson, a regular presence on Washington Sunday shows who in the past has condemned some of Trump’s rhetoric, his most controversial policies while and members of the former governor’s fellow lawmakers in Arkansas.

    Hutchinson has at times flirted with a presidential run as a conservative alternative to Trump, while Sanders has tamped down speculation that she is angling for a higher position.

    “I look forward to serving as governor of Arkansas for a full eight years if the people of Arkansas will give me that privilege and that opportunity,” she said this week on “Fox News Sunday.”

    Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.

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    #Sarah #Huckabee #Sanders #attacks #leftwing #culture #war #SOTU #response
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )