President Obama tried out his soul music falsetto last week at
New York’s Apollo Theater and he sounded pretty good. It might help
if he sang his State of the Union address, but not much.
It wouldn’t help because — from what we know of the man
and from the trial balloons he’s floated in the gigolo media —
Obama wants a season of confrontation, not a year of compromise. He
wants issues, not accomplishments.
Obama’s tactic — angry words spoken calmly
— has played well from the beginning of his presidential campaign
four years ago. In his first meeting with the Republican caucus in
the House three years ago, Obama answered Republican objections by
saying, “I won.”
Since then, his rhetoric has only increased in
temperature. His mantra is “we can’t wait.” His threat is that he
will act without congressional approval if he can’t get agreement
on his terms.
In the SOTU speech, according to a
trial balloon in the New York Times, Obama will demand
more “clean energy” investment, more taxation of “the rich” and —
in a string of liberal code words — legislation aimed at “income
equality,” which means taking wealth from the “rich” and giving it
to the government.
It’s fortunate that Republicans chose Indiana Gov. Mitch
Daniels to give the response to Obama’s address. Daniels is a solid
conservative and doesn’t speak in overheated rhetorical terms.
Daniels sees fiscal responsibility as a moral issue. Last
September, he told a CNN interviewer that our economic mess is an
existential issue. Daniels said, “What’s troubling me most is it’s
not just our economy at stake, I think it’s the whole American
prospect.”
On national security, Daniels has demonstrated an
understanding far deeper than that of Obama’s. Just a few days
after the SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, he told a Fox News
interviewer that bin Laden’s death didn’t mark an end to the war.
When the interviewer argued with him, he said, “This
was a very significant achievement, tremendously powerful from a
symbolic standpoint. Operationally, I assume of some importance
too. But with everyone else, I think we all accept that it’s just
one real important moment in what will be a continuing conflict and
continuing responsibility to the government.”
Daniels is in the right position at the right time to set
the Republican path for 2012. Here are a few ideas he might use.
Some are obvious, others less so.
Daniels will highlight the fact that the day of the State
of the Union address is an unhappy anniversary. It marks 1,000 days
since the Democratic-controlled Senate has passed a budget. He can
make it clear that the House has done its job, and that voters’
anger at congressionally driven wasteful spending should be focused
on the Democrats and their leader, President Obama. He can — and
should — say that America’s economy can’t recover until Obama is
out of office.
Newt Gingrich has started to make energy an issue. Obama’s
action stopping the Keystone pipeline, coupled with his renewed
call for investment in “clean energy” — see, e.g., Solyndra —
comes at the time when Cuba is about to begin drilling for oil in
international waters close to Florida. As the Washington
Examiner
reported Sunday, Repsol, the Spanish energy company, is about
to begin drilling in international waters claimed by Cuba about 70
miles off the Florida Keys. And Canadian PM Stephen Harper has made
it clear that if the Keystone pipeline isn’t built going south to
the United States, it will be built going west and the oil will be
shipped to China.
Daniels should make it clear that the United States is
energy-rich, kept energy-poor only by Obama and his rent-seeking
global warmist allies. He should promise that Republicans will work
hard to thwart Obama’s energy depression and that if a Republican
is elected to the presidency, will work with Harper to make sure
that Canadian oil comes here and doesn’t go to China. This is a
promise to Harper that Gingrich and Romney should make
forthwith.
While everyone is focused on the Republican primaries,
Daniels can look ahead to November when his party can not only hold
the House but take over the Senate. To do that, as Daniels knows,
they have to reach the social moderate/fiscal conservative people
we used to label “Reagan Democrats.” If he speaks directly to them,
Daniels can start building the coalition that will win across the
board. There are two things he can do Tuesday night to begin that
process.
First, though the unemployment rate is trending downward,
it is still over 8 percent. People are hurting and Obama’s address
will offer more empty promises, more spending, and a continuation
of the oxymoronic “jobless recovery” we’ve been in for a year.
Daniels should begin this part of his speech by pointing out that
most of the “drop” in unemployment is attributable to people giving
up on getting a job. From December 2010 to December 2011, about
1,478,000 Americans dropped out of the workforce according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Daniels can say that the reason for those people dropping
out of the workforce is Obama’s no-growth policies. There’s a
plethora of Republican plans to restore growth which will
inevitably increase the number of jobs available and restore
American productivity. Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, now head
of the Free Congress Foundation, has an excellent
plan which doesn’t require magic or miracles to pull off.
Daniels can outline the best features of these plans and contrast
them with Obama’s plans. If he does, it will resonate with the
Reagan Dems. They know Obama’s promises of economic growth are
hollow.
This year, both parties in Congress will be fighting with
and against the Obama campaign on federal spending. The failure of
the “supercommittee” and the resulting threat of sequestration of
$600 billion in defense spending — on top of the $400 billion
Obama has already cut — is disconnected from reality. Daniels
should issue a strong call to prevent those cuts, whatever the
final amount may be, from cutting muscle rather than fat. He can
say that Republicans favor a thorough review of the Pentagon and
intelligence community budgets to see what we can cut — the fat —
while ensuring that we have the muscle to deter or defeat the
threats America faces.
Obama’s State of the Union speech will be nothing more
than a campaign speech. In earlier SOTU’s Obama has used his calm,
angry words to attack the Congress and the Supreme Court. Daniels
can and should mock him for it. Americans know that those in the
audience cannot respond to Obama’s rudeness. When a president’s
falsity results in a sitting Supreme Court justice mouthing “not
true” in view of the cameras as Justice Alito did two years ago in
Obama’s attack on the court for the Citizens United
decision on campaign finance, it’s out of bounds. Obama will state
more falsehoods this time, and Daniels should call him out on each
and every one.
Last, and not least, the gigolo media are a legitimate
issue in this campaign, a powerful one for Republicans as Newt
Gingrich demonstrated just before the South Carolina primary.
Daniels should capitalize on this by telling Obama’s amen chorus in
the media that Republicans will gladly join that battle and hold
them up to the ridicule they deserve every day from now until
November 6. It’s a winner, governor, and a card you can’t be
reluctant to play.
