It’s been clear for some time that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his constituents as pawns and his gubernatorial powers as props to prep his national image for a 2024 bid.
While each of his various policy proposals and attacks on public education, people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, the media, etc. have been projected as the hardline governor’s humble war on woke-ism in his state, he knows quite well how to appeal to the MAGA crowd. And he’s been using his tenure as governor to boost his national relevance ahead of what is shaping up to be a nasty GOP primary.
And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is following his lead.
Earlier today I posted this video in which Sen. Mike Lee reacts with disbelief and shock that President Biden said some Republicans propose sunsetting Social Security and Medicare. Pure disbelief. Where could Biden get this obviously false crazy idea? Note that he did this while sitting next to Sen. Rick Scott, the guy who actually formally wrote the proposal as the Senate GOP platform position.
Great moment from last night: Arch Social Security gutter and debt ceiling hostage taker @SenMikeLee (R-UT) reacts with incredulity to President pointing out GOP support for sunsetting Soc Sec and Medicare. And he's sitting right next to Rick Scott, THE GUY WHO PROPOSED IT! pic.twitter.com/cdmXzLs2Bb
Now look at this video from Lee’s first campaign for Senate in which he says, “It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.”
With the future of Social Security and Medicare back under discussion — and not in a good way — we need to review a few points about how these subjects are discussed in the nation’s capital. This morning I saw some very solid, level-headed reporters noting that Rick Scott didn’t say Social Security and Medicare should be sunsetted after 5 years. He said all government programs should be sunsetted. And it just happens that Social Security and Medicare are government programs. In other words, these folks suggested, while Biden’s claim was technically true it amounted to a kind of cheap shot.
Watching State of the Union addresses is one of my least favorite parts of what I do at TPM. I find them a mix of tedious and stressful to watch. By and large they don’t matter. I’d prefer not to watch them. But it’s part of the job. This was very different from any of the State of the Union addresses I’ve seen in 40-plus years of watching them.
Joe Biden isn’t a particularly rousing public speaker normally. The first 10 or 15 minutes of his address were fairly boilerplate, occasionally halting. The substance was pitched toward mid-sized and small towns in post-industrial America. This was unsurprising but well-executed. But then it went somewhere entirely different, not in substance but in presentation, energy and tone.
I don’t need to describe the speech to you because you presumably saw it. Here are the two points that stood out to me.
10:50 PM: I’m not sure what else to say about this response. Dark, growling, over the top. Republicans not doing themselves any favors here. Especially after the speech everyone just saw.
My God, it's just poetry, watching Biden tussle with Marje Greene as she does her best imitation of that famous Real Housewives of New Jersey scene. pic.twitter.com/KDSauuGUqS
I’ll have a few more thoughts in a moment. I want to take in the official response from Huckabee Sanders. But that was much much livelier and better than I’d expected. I was surprised.
10:18 PM: We may try to put some of this together later. But there seem to be a lot of prestige reporters tonight not quite willing to say what happened on the floor in that exchange about Social Security and Medicare, with Republicans hooting and hollering. We all saw what happened.
10:05 PM: There were some feral Republicans there yelling about the border.
10:00 PM: “Equal protection under the law is a covenant we have with each other in America.”
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The White House has been unusually public (and repetitive) with its stance on the debt ceiling: that it simply will not negotiate with Republicans on future cost cutting while those same Republicans have a gun to the head of the global economy.
