Let’s see: the ethical values that Congressional Democrats spat upon last night were competence, responsibility, integrity, respect, civility, courtesy, decency, dignity, self-restraint, prudence, fairness and patriotism. That’s quite an accomplishment in a single event. The party’s decision to challenge the GOP’s well-earned title as “The Stupid Party” last night during the State of the Union address was, in turn,
- Foolish
- Juvenile
- Desperate
- Embarrassing (to their party, the nation and the institution of Congress)
- Damning
- Damaging to democracy
- An appeal to the Trump Deranged while simultaneously proving how crippling the malady can be…and…
- …a gift to the man they hate so much, President Trump.
In “True Grit,” the villain Tom Cheney is shot by young Maddie Ross after he taunts her by telling the girl how to cock the giant pistol she has aimed at him. He is stunned when she shoots him, and cries out, “I didn’t think you’d do it!”
I might make “The Cheney” a new Ethics Alarms distinction. I had read about the ridiculous college campus protest-level tactics Democrats were considering, and posted about them yesterday, as well as noting that the party’s leader in the House, Hakeem Jefferies, had advised them to eschew such nonsense in favor of a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.” Jeffries was right for a change, and I really thought all of the stories about the Democrats bringing props and dressing up would prove to be false alarms. I didn’t think they’d do it! Yet when the time for the yearly Presidential “speech “state of the nation” speech arrived, there were the Democrats, looking like the studio audience in a particularly ugly episode of “Let’s Make a Deal.”
Many of the women wore pink “to highlight that there are more women in Congress who are Democrats than Republicans.” Others wore T-shirts under their clothes with messages for Trump, like the habitually unprofessional Jasmine Crockett here…
Rep. Al Green, who believes that the democratic way to deal with Republican Presidents is to impeach them for existing, got himself thrown out of the chamber for disrupting Trump’s speech by shouting and shaking his cane like Grandpa Simpson. Someone shouted, moronically, “What about the eggs?” as if the President could have any effect on the prices of anything after less than two months on the job. Others brought little hand-held paddles, like the ones with smiley faces on them in those TV depression drug commercials. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico held one up that read “This is not normal.” It sure wasn’t. Many of the Democrats walked out on the President, unlike Republicans who stayed in their seats while President Biden called their party a threat to democracy in his final SOTU.
What a gift to Trump and the Republicans! The President decided to exploit the minority party’s idiocy, first by stating in his speech that they wouldn’t stand or applaud anything he announced no matter how uncontroversial, bipartisan, and beneficent, then by giving them an absurd number of opportunities to prove him correct during the speech, which the Democrats did. Morons.
They wouldn’t even smile, much less stand and applaud, for the U.S. killing a terrorist, the family of Laken Riley or a child conquering cancer, and this, naturally, became the theme of conservative post-speech coverage. The SOTU gimmick of having guests in the balcony stand and be lauded, which I think began with Ronald Reagan (check me on that), has now lurched completely out of control. But as long as the Democrats were determined to make asses of themselves, I’m surprised Trump didn’t introduce rabbis, nuns, baseball legends, Down Syndrome kids, puppies and kittens just to see the Democrats sit stony-faced.
Trump, as he did in his cloying speech at the GOP National Convention last summer, indulged himself shamelessly. He spoke far too long (guaranteeing that as few Americans as possible would listen to the Democrats’ “rebuttal”), abused the forum (by crudely insulting Joe Biden, as I posted last night, and later Senator Warren) and generally comported himself like a gloating jerk. But while his comportment was what we have learned to expect (See: The Julie Principle), the Democrats behavior overshadowed it all, showing not merely a party in disarray and panic, but one that has lost its collective mind.
On one panel I saw on Fox, Ari Fleischer opined that the Democratic Party was dead after its disgraceful performance. I doubt that, but it is also hard for me to believe that any rational American can be proud to be a member of a party that presents itself to the public that way in traditional civic event.
Ethics Alarms 
Before 15 minutes had passed, America’s Meme Warriors were already cranking out a flood of appropriate mockery on the literal blank slate canvasses the Democrats provided last night.
Outmaneuvered by Donald Trump, who very well may have only made this speech for the sole purpose of forcing Democrats to behave exactly like the toddlers they are, Republicans have fodder for years to come – and none of it is cheap and meaningless fodder.
By the way, Dan Crenshaw has a great conversation with Yuval Levin on his podcast “We Hold These Truths” that discusses exactly why congressmen and woman are incentivized to mostly spend their time in congress doing these performances instead of governing.
Talk about holding your jaw out for a knockout punch! Amazing.
And it blows my mind because it wasn’t even a Machiavellian-esque brilliant political maneuver. He just said things Americans would want to hear.
Keep going high, Democrats.
This looked sillier than Michael Dukakis in the tank.
No question.
I didn’t see this post when I commented on the “Biden is the worst ever” post right before it. Your comments here echo mine.
The Democrats have no idea how to deal with Trump because Trump is a master at framing their positions, forcing them into defending the wildest, extreme positions. Of course biological males are stronger than biological females in activities where strength is an advantage. Yet, 100% of Democrat law makers, championing the rights of WOMEN (do they know what a woman is anymore?) voting against keeping biological males out of female sports. Trump wants to deport illegal criminal aliens but the Democrats think members of Tren de Agua and MS13 should be lionized. Trump wants the Russia-Ukraine war to end but Democrats want it continue in perpetuity. Trump was the end the flood of phentanyl into the country but the Democrats think he is a bad person.
jvb
jvb, I think you (and Steve W below) do a nice job distilling what the President did well in the speech. He presented starkly binary choices to the Democrats, forcing them to reject the common-sense choice simply for the sake of being partisan. Even on the issue of tariffs – which many on both sides would see as dangerous – the President did a solid job of making his case, forcing the Democrats to side with the continuing unfair, lopsided trading practices that have destroyed so many jobs here.
I still think it was below the belt to announce President Biden as the worst President (though he is). It will still below the belt – though I admit I laughed while shaking my head – to call Senator Warren “Pocahontas” (though she has richly earned the moniker). I still think he dipped too many times into the “previous admin and the Democrats are incompetent” well (though it was and they are). I think had he avoided those things, I would have said the speech was a resounding success.
And in fact, it may have been as great as you believe, but those other things tainted it for me. And it was too long and winding a road. He needs a new, more focused speech-writer.
There’s a reason for democrats behaving this way. I call it “reflexive TDS”, which means anything Trump says, does, or proposes they automatically hate. And anything Trump is for, they’re against, even if it’s ending wars. Reflexive TDS Is automatic and requires no thought process.
Needless to say, the Cognitive Dissonance Scale makes this a particularly wrong-headed strategy.
Would the leadership have taken these extreme positions if these positions were not promoited by academic, media, and entertainment elites?
As usual, I didn’t watch the State or the Union speech live. I just now finished watching it.
Other than Trumps really, really annoying monotone speaking, I thought he gave a pretty damn good speech. For the most part, I think he stayed on script, read directly from the teleprompters, didn’t allow the open disrespectful antics from the Democrats to visibly anger him, and he didn’t verbally wander off too much, heck he even took a moment to thank all the Democrats attending for voting to confirm Marco Rubio. The speech did a reasonably good job of presenting the perceived accomplishments of the Administration over the last few weeks and gave us a little insight into where the Administration is heading. I think he gave the “We the People” a bit of hope for our future tomorrows. Good job President Trump.
As for the Democrats; what a juvenile bunch of morally bankrupt, disrespectful, pieces of crap, partisan hacks. The character shown by the Democrats in that room are a direct reflection of their character, they truly are the worst of the worst. Photos and video of the hypocritical Democrats disrespect should be used in upcoming election cycles, video editors won’t even have to cherry pick or edit the video, just use what they actually did. What the Democrats did was terrible.
In my opinion; this speech was a really big win for President Trump and a huge loss for Washington DC Democrats.
As for the Democrats; what a juvenile bunch of morally bankrupt, disrespectful, pieces of crap, partisan hacks.
Right, but this is not just what the Democrats chose to be, it’s what they wanted to be.
They behaved exactly like they, and the leftmost wing of their party, wanted them to behave. Not only did they enjoy it, they think it was profoundly successful.
To which I say, “Great! Keep it up!” Not because I want them to be successful, but because this path leads to electoral disaster.
Jack wrote:
The party’s decision to challenge the GOP’s well-earned title as “The Stupid Party” last night during the State of the Union address was, in turn,
…
There, fixed it for you.
At least for the moment…
Doug Shoen, Democrat pollster for the Clintons gave Trump relatively high marks and lambasted his party for their behavior which in his mind demonstrated their lack of any legitimate alternatives. His opinion piece is below.
“The starkest impact made by President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress was the boldness of his vision and the absolute absence of any alternative from the Democratic Party.
Whether you voted for Trump or not last November, it was hard on Tuesday night not to see someone seeking to put his agenda into practice. The president made clear to lawmakers and indeed the world, that his overarching goal is American renewal and the reinvigoration of the American Dream.
As an American patriot who remembers JFK’s inaugural address in 1961, and remembers Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address in 1980, it’s hard not to see the president’s speech in the same terms.
To be sure, the challenges the president faces are no less great. It remains unclear, at the very least, whether he will succeed in bringing down inflation, getting prices under control, ending the war in Ukraine and reasserting American strength both at home and abroad. There is no reason to believe, after his speech to Congress, that he is any closer to accomplishing his goals than he was before. (interjection from me – it has been fewer than six weeks since inauguration and the successes he has had to date such as $1.2trillion in promised private investment from Honda, a Taiwanese chip maker and several others would suggest he may very well accomplish his goals. Imagine what might be accomplished if members of Congress looked at moving America forward rather than working to acquire power)
Still, it is very hard for anyone who is a neutral observer to do anything other than recognize the forward-looking, expansive nature of Trump’s vision.
At the same time, it does not appear to me that the political party that I continue to belong to, with increasing difficulty, has any answers at all. The use of signage in the House Chamber, such as “false,” “save Medicaid,” “protect veterans,” only underscored the absolute limits of my party’s ability to articulate differences.
It is as if the Democrats have gone beyond even Clinton campaign strategist James Carville’s advice to stay silent and “play possum.” They have become trivial and almost irrelevant.
I write this with sadness. I am not certain that there are any clear answers that we have to the challenges we face, despite a clear agenda for America and a clear set of policy prescriptions that the president outlined. While I was uplifted by his rhetoric, his promises and the use of personal examples, I was depressed that what I saw did not represent the best of what our country stands for.
That the Democrats could only fuss and sit, mute, left me cold. And it left me thinking that our adversaries saw, dramatically, how polarized and divided we remain.
I well understand that in praising President Trump’s speech, it appears that I, a mainstream Democrat of 50 years’ experience, have somehow changed parties.
Nothing is farther from the truth. Nonetheless, anyone who cares about America has to support the president’s overarching goals on the economy, inflation, the southern border, on crime and embracing peace around the world.
Watching Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin deliver the Democratic response to the president’s speech, I felt saddened that she had to introduce herself, by dint of her credentials, and explain who she is. That is largely a metaphor for the challenges and divisions we face.
We are no closer to solving our problems, as the polls have shown recently. But we did get a vision on Tuesday night. We did get a clear sense that we have a president who is a bold, transformational leader dedicated to revitalizing the American Dream. Whether he succeeds or not is still very much up to question. “
Wow. Gutsy! He’ll be cancelled in 9—8—7—6—5—
Just throwing this out there. I know that members of Congress get immunity for anything they say in the well but what gives them the ability to slander Musk by holding signs that say Musk steals that are known to be shown globally as they sit in their seats as an audience member?
Sure Musk is a public figure but knowing it is a lie and doing so because it is driven by malice. If you cannot prove malice here I don’t know how it could ever be proven without an absolute confession.
They have immunity.
I must be getting used to Trump’s style of speaking because I actually thought the speech was fairly good. The Biden & Warren comments were unnecessary but as usual correct and blunt. It was fascinating to see the Dems not care about not taxing Medicare, tips, and overtime. So much for the party of the working class!
I particularly enjoyed the commercials that provided support and backdrop for the Trump administration accomplishments, solidly countering democrat lies and hypocrisy.