Scaros: Think Biden's State of the Union Was Horrible? That Won't Matter
I look at the big picture in politics: What’s best for my country? And I think what’s best for the United States of America is for a worthwhile Republican to win the presidency in 2024, hopefully retaining the House and winning back the Senate in the process.
In order to get there, we need to take a good, hard and — here’s the operative word — realistic look at our strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, we’re living in a bubble, and bubble-dwellers who insist we lose elections because “commiecrats cheat!” aren’t helping to reverse the situation.
Take President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, for instance. Did you think it was terrible? Of course you did! But that won’t help very much because you weren’t planning on voting for Biden anyway.
What matters most is what independents — who aren’t committed to either major party’s ideology — and those Democrats and Republicans who don’t always vote thought of it. Too many of those who considered it a bad speech fail to understand how it helps Biden anyway — and there’s the problem.
First of all, there are all kinds of exaggerated comments that Biden is senile. Gullible, impressionable people tend to take that literally. But a senile person would get up there and say something like, “Who am I? Where am I?” Maybe strip down to his underwear, or try to eat the microphone. If that actually happened, both major parties — yes, really, the Democrats too — would seek to remove him from office. But it didn’t.
Instead, Biden looked like an old man. He mistakenly called Chuck Schumer the Senate minority leader. He slurred his words. But that doesn’t make him senile, and many if not most voters can live with that.
Next, there’s the ritual of the party out of presidential power (in this case, the Republicans) playing sore loser at State of the Union addresses and looking bad, while the president, by comparison, looks statesmanlike. It almost always happens that way, no matter who’s president.
Three years ago, when President Donald Trump proudly announced record-low unemployment numbers, half of the chamber stood up and clapped — members of his own party. The Democrats sat in their seats with their arms folded. Their contempt for Trump was stronger than their patriotic fervor to cheer such a great statistic.
This time around, it was Biden who boasted of record-low unemployment and Republicans who refused to stand and clap. And before anyone says “they didn’t clap because Biden’s lying about the numbers!” ask yourself this: If Biden was a Republican, do you really think that, out of principle, they wouldn’t have stood and clapped?
When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene yelled out that the president is a liar, she became that guest you wouldn’t invite to a wedding reception because she’d make a drunken fool of herself. NOTE: It doesn’t matter if she’s right — that Biden is a liar. You simply don’t offend the dignity and decorum of a State of the Union address with such boorish and embarrassing behavior.
Can Democrats be just as bad? Sure they can! After all, Nancy Pelosi disgraced her House speakership on countless occasions, which made Biden’s calling her “the greatest speaker of the House in history” utterly laughable.
In 2020, the last time she was speaker for a Trump State of the Union address, she said, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States” in announcing Trump. That sounded fine to the average American who doesn’t realize that the proper protocol is for the speaker to preface those words with, “It is my distinct honor and high privilege of presenting to you” the president of the United States.
More casual political observers did notice, though, her eminently petty and classless act of visibly tearing up Trump’s speech from her speaker’s perch.
So, why am I bashing Taylor Greene so much? Because unlike Pelosi, when she acts like she doesn’t belong in a meeting with the grown-ups, she hurts Republicans. It’s all about the big picture, folks — winning in 2024.
Biden left out most of the bad stuff going on right now: the rampant wokeness in everything from teaching that whites are inherently racist to promoting puberty blockers to teenagers who think they’re a different gender. The untenable border crisis. Unaffordable groceries. Thankfully, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who gave the rebuttal, did a masterful job of driving that message home.
Biden is beatable in 2024, but — I hate to admit — it’s not going to be easy.
For starters, there are more Democrats than Republicans, and no, not because of “dead people on the books.” Democrats are the party of candy, and more people are suckered into thinking that they’ll magically get all kinds of goodies for free.
Even more troublingly, Democrats control the media, academia and Hollywood. Of course they’ll generate more votes when they control what people learn in school and watch on TV or at the movies.
But Republicans have an advantage: better ideas. Much, much better. But in order to win, here are some dos and don’ts they need to follow:
1) Don’t talk about Biden being senile; 2) don’t support “drunken wedding guest” behavior by Republican elected officials or supporters; and 3) don’t blame everything on Democrats cheating.
1) Do focus on how wokeness is destroying America; 2) do emphasize our porous border and the horrible effects of transnational trespass; and 3) do remind Americans that the reason they’re paying so much for gas and food is that Biden shut down domestic oil production and printed a ton of money.
Finally, hats off to Kevin McCarthy. He handled his first State of the Union in the speaker’s seat with class. He may not be “conservative” enough for some, but he’s astronomically better than Pelosi. Let’s be grateful for that and not blame him if he’s not perfect.
Perfection is the enemy of improvement. Let’s not trash others for agreeing with us only 98 percent of the time. Woke leftist snowflakes do that; let’s not be like them.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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