Love this move:
Republicans have decided they’re not going to give a rebuttal to President Obama’s jobs speech later this week, a decision House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi took as a high affront to the White House.
At least three GOP lawmakers also have announced they’re not going to show up for the presidential address. House Speaker John Boehner’s office then confirmed Tuesday evening that nobody from the party would deliver an official televised response.
Pelosi said the party’s “silence” would “speak volumes about their lack of commitment to creating jobs.”
“The Republicans’ refusal to respond to the president’s proposal on jobs is not only disrespectful to him, but to the American people,” Pelosi said.
But Boehner spokesman Mike Steel said Obama’s proposals on Thursday “will rise or fall on their own merits,” suggesting a GOP response was not needed.
I don’t agree with any organized boycott of the speech. Showing up at a Joint Session of Congress is part of the job description, although I do believe individual members can vote their consciences with their feet.
But not responding? Silence is golden, and speaks louder than any teleprompter in this case.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
“The Republicans’ refusal to respond to the president’s proposal on jobs is not only disrespectful to him, but to the American people” who will be watching the NFL at about the time any Republican could possibly respond.
Which is a smart move on the part of the republicans. Obama will already be screwing up the pregame – the republicans don’t need to exacerbate it.
It’s disrespectful to say your are addressing a Joint Session without consulting the Speaker of the House.
Showing up at a Joint Session of Congress is part of the job description, providing the President is using the occasion to either declare war, give the State of the Union Address or if there is a significant national occurrence – like 9/11. If the President is simply using it to resurrect his (failing) political agenda and bamboozle the people, which he could just as well do from the Oval Office on camera, it would be totally appropriate if members of Congress stayed away.
Why should they allow him to conveniently confuse his official duties with his political ambitions? If a significant number of members of Congress stayed home, I’d bet that would restore future Joint Sessions of Congress to their former level of protocol and importance and send a clear message that Obama is not going to get away with setting a bad precedence which others might regretfully follow.
Exactly. This is a stump speech; I think Congress would have been well within their rights to refuse the meeting absent some reason.
POTUS calling Congress in to Joint session (more accurately, asking to appear) is for such things as asking for a declaration of war, something truly momentous. Not a bunch of good video for a campaign speech.
The WH is already downplaying the speech. I think staying home to watch the NFL pregame with the kids is appropriate.
When Obama commits a plan to writing and submits it to Congress, that will mean something. Then, there will be something worth a response in kind. All this palaver is tiring and pointless.
Just giving a speech, wherever given, is just talk … thinly veiled “campaigning” in my not so humble opinion.
GO Green Bay!!
The government does not create jobs. The creation of jobs is incidental to the establishment and development of an economy. The government’s responsibility is to enable the conditions where entrepreneurs (i.e., pioneers) thrive, whereby they establish and develop businesses that employ managers and workers, and produce wealth from which government derives its funding (e.g., taxes) to finance its activities and compensate civil servants.
Unfortunately, thus far, the current administration has gone out if its ways to increase risk and reduce incentive to pioneering efforts and has punished responsible behavior.
The federal budget alone is around $4 trillion annually, of which over $1 trillion (and closer to $2 trillion) is financed through the accumulation of debt. Several hundred billion has been redistributed to influence the people.
It would be advisable to return confiscated wealth to the people, but especially to the entrepreneurs, who establish and develop an economy.
It would be advisable to encourage and facilitate domestic resource recovery and energy production.
It would be advisable to remove every incentive (especially welfare) for illegal immigration, which serves to displace American men, women, and children; and, necessarily increases incidence of involuntary exploitation (including murder, rape, etc.).
On a related note, it would be advisable to acknowledge why over 1 million people annually leave their homes and risk their lives to reach the “shining city on a hill”. This would suggest and, in fact, it confirms that the corruption which pervades Hispanic (and Latino), African, Asian, etc., nations is progressive and intolerable.
It would be advisable to modify trade policies with nations that are governed by regimes and directed by ideologies where they people are effectively slaves, and the conduct business in conditions incomparable to our own.
It would be advisable to end institutional policies which denigrate individual dignity (e.g., judgment by the “color of one’s skin”) and devalue human life (e.g., the so-called “sexual revolution”).
The Democrats have no standing to offer any advise on these principal issues. The Republicans are progressively losing ground as they hesitate to act. Then again, the latter will be judged in total, once… If they recover a controlling interest in our government.
this forces the MSM to talk about the Obama speech and its details or lack thereof … the House already passed a budget, they have already spoken …
It could be worse. They could show up and laugh at everything he says. Maybe Dennis Miller should do the rebuttal, out of respect, of course.
Disagree. Obama does not view either the legislative branch or the judicial branch as co-equals to the executive branch.
We’ve seen repeatedly that he does not show them the respect that he expects from them. (He dressed down the Supreme Court at the State of the Union and he invited Paul Ryan to sit in the front row at a speech so that Obama could ridicule Ryan).
I don’t expect my Congressman to put up with that. I would not hold it against my Congressman if he was a no show considering Obama’s pattern of disrespecting those in attendence who hold views he disagrees with.
Furthermore, it’s humiliating to have to sit there like a potted plant while Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are jumping up and down like a jack-in-the-box to give Obama standing ovations for wanting to spend more of our money on failed policies.
If my Congressman does decide to show, then if Obama pulls his usual stunt of using his speech to lash out at his captive audience, then I hope they walk out en masse.
They won’t do that. But they should.
Solyndra – The Obama connection
“There is one very slippery fact that I am wondering about. It has to do with subordination. This a legal issue on who gets paid first in a bankruptcy. In all cases the equity is last on the list. But that is not the situation with Solyndra/Kaiser. From Bloomberg:
In February, Solyndra and its lenders reorganized the company’s debts, putting the U.S. loan behind $69.3 million owed to other lenders, including an affiliate of Solyndra’s biggest shareholder, Argonaut Ventures.
This kind of stuff is not supposed to happen. The equity interest of the Kaiser family got a preference as to the right of repayment from Solyndra. Kaiser got in front of the line. He got in front of the US Government’s $528mm IOU from Solyndra. Kaiser got in front of the interests of the American taxpayer. There had to be some very serious arm-twisting going on in the background to achieve this feat.”
“That leaves next to nothing for Uncle Sam. The taxpayers are going to take it in the ear for $400-500 million.
This is a story that could turn an election.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/solyndra-obama-connection
I heard that, Viator. Does seem strange that taxpayer obligations got pushed to the back of the line. But wait, GM bondholders suffered the same fate, although the UAW did all right.
Nevermind.
If an Obama scandal happens in the forest, does it make noise?
Excellent move by the gop. The focus should be 100% on this Messaih and his “spread the wealth” talking points.
And really, what exactly would the GOP be rebuutting? There is nothing on paper, no budget passed, nothing is there to rebuuttt.
If the stories that Obama’s plan is to spend $300 Billion more are true, silence is probably the best answer. As a child, silence from my parents worked better on me than yelling or punishing. We’ve tried the yelling, it didn’t work on him, lets try the silence.
Personally, I have yet to sit through one of his highness’s speeches. It’s all “blame bush, blame teaparty, blame republicans, blame earthquakes, hurricanes, headwinds….
When and if he grows up, and takes responsiblity for what HE is doing to stagnate this economey, then I will listen.
If I had to go and listen to him, I would get an I-pod and listen to that instead.
“Silence is golden and speaks louder than any teleprompter”
A great line sir. I look forward to seeing it on a bumper sticker post soon…
wardogs
Yep. Besides, some of his pals in the mainstream media are already beginning to give us some of the bits and pieces of his political obit, and it’s not just MoDo!
Who wants to get anywhere near that?
For example, here is NBC‘s Chuck Todd, their political director, announcing the survey news that their pollsters “are concerned” about Obama’s tanking numbers!
Sez ‘e:
And he’s getting “sage” political advice from his friends . . . folks like Washington Post political columnist, Eugene Robinson, who actually made the following recommendation in his column about what should be in the President’s “jobs speech.
I’m NOT kidding! Look for yourself.
First sentence!
So, perhaps another appropriate Republican response would be to just play this short message just before going to commercial.
This may will be the “Speech Too Far”
I think the protocol should be changed for Obama since he is prone to making so many pie-in-the-sky political speeches.
How about he create some jobs, and THEN they allow him to address a Joint Session of Congress because that would truly be historic.
Tip O’Neill refused to allow Reagan to speak to a joint session. Boehner should do the same. Tell obama there are just so many times a president can demand, uh, ask for a joint session and it be granted and he has already met his quota. All the networks that carry this excrement should be paid. Is there any chance that when, not if, he does this in the future and they waste their prime time on him, will they revolt and refuse to air his speech? Then again, there will not be any dim debates. To be fair, who would he debate? I guess Biden might be available and is always good for a laugh. He just went one better and used the power and office of the presidency to campaign for re-election. Is that illegal or not?
It just occurred to me. This kind of stuff is the reason the dims were so ameniable to the sinking of the Fairness Doctrine. I wondered what they had up their sleeve for them to do that. If obamba gives a speech in a joint session like this, could a republican demand the same time and setting if the Fairness Doctrine was in force? He will do something like this many times during the next fourteen months.