To my knowledge, no media outlet has mentioned the Three Stooges-like opening of Obama’s State of the Union Address. Was I the only one who noticed? Our President handed envelopes to Biden and Boehner, seated behind him, but he mixed them up. (I’m assuming these were copies of his speech with their names written on the envelopes). So the next few seconds resulted in a quick re-shuffling of these envelopes between the Vice-President and the Speaker until the proper envelope was in the correct recipient’s hands. Not a mention of this to date, as far as I know. But the media continues to comment on Rubio’s lunge for his water bottle during his State of the Union response on February 12…
Karen Tumulty and Manuel Roig-Franzia, in their front-page Washington Post article of February 11 reported that Karl Rove has called Mr. Rubio “the best communicator since Ronald Reagan”. They go on to say that he embodies two demographic groups with which the GOP needs to connect: young people and Hispanics (he delivered his State of Union response in English and in Spanish). And they add that he is taking a major role in shaping an overhaul of immigration law; he opposed the Dream Act but has been working on his own version and now argues that offering citizenship to illegal immigrants is the right thing to do in providing some degree of legal status for the 11 million who are in the US without documentation.
In February 19’s Washington Post, Eugene Robinson reflects on this possible policy as offering a clear path to citizenship for those who were brought here as children, along with provisional legal status as well as a route to permanent legal status for those who came as adults. Also, the policy would include ways to tighten security along the Mexican border, and would offer some kind of a guest-worker program. And he mentions changes which would streamline immigration for high-tech workers.
Mr. Robinson adds that this immigration discussion between Obama and the Republicans “…isn’t so much about what is being proposed. The bigger factor is who’s proposing it”. And he goes on to say, “Republican members of Congress have shown a willingness, even an eagerness, to vote against measures that they themselves have sponsored in the past – if Obama is now proposing them. So if the President really wants immigration reform to pass, one of the most helpful things he could do is put out his own plan as a decoy, to draw Republican fire, while the Senate works toward bipartisan con
