{"id":145999,"date":"2023-02-08T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=913413"},"modified":"2023-02-08T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T00:00:00","slug":"the-republican-response-to-bidens-state-of-the-union-shows-they-are-fresh-out-of-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/02\/08\/the-republican-response-to-bidens-state-of-the-union-shows-they-are-fresh-out-of-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Republican response to Biden\u2019s State of the Union shows they are fresh out of ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Photo by Al Drago\/Bloomberg via Getty Images
\nOn Tuesday night (7 February) the US president Joe Biden fulfilled his constitutional requirement to, \u201cfrom time to time\u201d, inform Congress of the State of the Union and \u201crecommend measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient\u201d.
\nIn the annual address to the nation Biden predictably called for unity, and asked his Republican counterparts to work with him to find solutions to common problems. He spoke specifically about the economy, an infrastructure bill that will create new jobs, and reforms that have lowered immigration. The only real surprise was the president\u2019s ad-libbed jabs at Republicans who shouted \u201cliar\u201d at him from the audience.
\nIn a pre-drafted rebuttal to Biden\u2019s State of the Union, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas and a former Donald Trump press secretary, focused on the divisions in America\u2019s political discourse by framing it as a struggle between \u201cfreedom\u201d and a \u201cradical left\u201d. Instead of a choice between \u201cright\u201d and \u201cleft\u201d, she said American voters face a choice between \u201cnormal\u201d and \u201ccrazy\u201d. Not once did she provide a concrete a policy solution to anything that ails the country. This is despite how, leading up to last night\u2019s speech, Republicans ranked strengthening the economy as their first priority.
\nThe Republicans\u2019 rebuttal fell to Sanders because she is a reminder of Trump\u2019s Make America Great Again administration. She rehashed many of her former boss\u2019s talking points: that America has been weakened by a \u201cwoke mob\u201d, fixating on trans rights, the teaching of critical race theory in schools, and the Democrats\u2019 alleged assault on freedom of speech. She also targeted Biden\u2019s failures on standing up to China, the opioid crisis and on not closing the southern border.
\nRelated
\nBut she failed to heed what should have been one of the biggest lessons of Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign success \u2013 that just telling people what you are against is not saying the same thing as telling them what you are for. The problem is Republicans don\u2019t have anything concrete to present to the American people. Biden\u2019s \u201cweakness\u201d towards China doesn\u2019t mean much if you can\u2019t describe what strength looks like, and compassion for victims of the opioid epidemic feels hollow unless you can propose something to do about it. Even though it was unfeasible, Trump\u2019s initial promise to \u201cbuild the wall\u201d both tapped into a grievance and offered a solution. (See also \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d and \u201clock her up\u201d \u2013 they might have been impossible or undemocratic measures, but they were measures that many still rallied around.) Since the former president left office, Republicans have had a hard time coming up with anything tangible to ignite voters beyond their most loyal base.
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\nAfter years of substituting a policy platform for ideological clich\u00e9s it\u2019s hard to remember that the right used to stand for something. The Republicans were the party of small government, fiscal responsibility, Christian morality and strong foreign policy, who would maintain American dominance. The Republicans have lost that narrative. Their party leaders focus on telling voters who to hate, hoping that grievances alone will be enough to drag their supporters to the voting booths. But as last year\u2019s midterm results proved, the electorate needs more than soundbites telling them the radical left is evil.
\nThis lack of a platform has led to a disintegration of the Republican Party. Although some of its politicians did not lose the opportunity to heckle Biden during his speech last night, the tensest moment of the night came when the Republican senator Mitt Romney told the disgraced right-wing newcomer George Santos that he didn\u2019t belong in Congress. This follows last month\u2019s embarrassing House leadership election when it took the Republican Kevin McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to be elected speaker, the most since 1859, because far-right Congress members in his own party splintered and demanded concessions.
\nIf Republicans want to reclaim the White House in 2024 they need to figure out what they want to accomplish. Red baseball caps are great for some, but Making America Great Again only works if you know exactly what needs fixing and how you\u2019re going to do it.
\n[See also: Why Europeans should not get too used to Joe Biden, the last of the Atlanticists]<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Al Drago\/Bloomberg via Getty Images
\nOn Tuesday night (7 February) the US president Joe Biden fulfilled his constitutional requirement to, \u201cfrom time to time\u201d, inform Congress of the State of the Union and \u201crecommend measures as he shall judge…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,586,325,671,288,194,698,92,1542,940,120,484,1367,1332],"tags":[2210,10320,2375,1696,3544,10331,2461,10315,2107,1977],"class_list":["post-145999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-economy","category-education","category-finance","category-medicine","category-news-chinese-law","category-procurement","category-statistics","category-technology","category-tourism","category-travel","category-united-states","category-usa","category-white-house","tag-america","tag-biden","tag-christianity","tag-congress","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-immigration","tag-media-intelligence","tag-religion","tag-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146000,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145999\/revisions\/146000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}