Go back to the strategy of 2010. GOP is becoming the Democrats Lite.
Via TPM
There was no unified opposition at the conclusion of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. Instead, four different Republicans — representing, in some ways, four different factions of the Republican party — had something to say to the nation.
They shared some of the same talking points: Obamacare is a disaster and Obama’s economic agenda is ruining America’s future. The GOP is trying to offer some kind of alternative to the electorate. But the similarities largely stopped there, in yet another display of the fractured Republican Party that has a chronic inability to present a coherent and singular vision to the country.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA) spoke for the party’s establishment, with the added bonus of being a woman in leadership at a time when the party’s standing with women seems shaky. Sen. Mike Lee (UT) was the self-appointed leader of the tea party, who rebutted the president while attempting to represent that nebulous constituency that has so influenced the party since 2010. Sen. Rand Paul (KY) more or less represented himself, the lone 2016 aspirant to speak Tuesday night, and also gave voice to the libertarian sect. And Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) addressed the Spanish-speaking audiences on behalf of the party’s leadership, another attempt to reach a population with whom Republicans have been unpopular.
That just about covers everybody. Each constituency had a messenger, and ascendant members of the party had an opportunity to showcase themselves in the national spotlight.Lee, by contrast, started by warning of the president’s economic agenda and attempted to turn Obama’s message of inequality against him.
“Today, Americans know in their hearts that something is wrong. Much of what is wrong relates to the sense that the ‘American Dream’ is falling out of reach for far too many of us,” Lee said. “We are facing an inequality crisis — one to which the President has paid lip-service, but seems uninterested in truly confronting or correcting.”
“But where does this new inequality come from? From government — every time it takes rights and opportunities away from the American people and gives them instead to politicians, bureaucrats and special interests.”
He then turned to a similar notion of positive reform that McMorris Rodgers, listing some of the work that conservatives have done in Congress — but made a explicit effort to distance himself from the party establishment line.
He referred to the “new generation of leaders in Washington” — people like Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) — who would aim to “Make D.C. Listen” as they had tried to do during last fall’s government shutdown. Those were the same people, you might remember, who drove House Republican leadership crazy during the shutdown debacle.