The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

OUR VIEW

Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:30 PM

OUR VIEW: The Democrat's Response To State Of The Union Address Broke New Ground On The Ugliness Of Their Party

IIn acting like this the Dems did more than embarrassed themselves Tuesday night with their actions and sitting on their hands during moments when they should be celebrating a great year for America. They showed that their party, along with the media that protects them, have a very dark heart whose hatred for Trump will do nothing but continue to poison things in DC and virtually make it impossible to unite the nation unless these people are voted out of office.

Even when the President honored veterans and touted soaring jobs numbers in the black communities many Democrats represent, they sat stone-faced and in some cases mockingly scowled and smirked. One Representative from Illinois, Luis Gutierrez, even walked out after becoming triggered by a patriotic chant. So much for President Trump's olive branch.

Then there is the media's response.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was downright effusive after Tuesday night's speech. "This was earnest and lofty," she gushed, "and he is known for his earnestness."  Of course, she was critiquing Joe Kennedy III, who delivered the official Democratic response to President Trump's State of the Union address.

As for the evening's main event, Maddow accused President Trump of being a warmonger. "He wants a war with North Korea," she assured her left-wing viewers.

That was actually mild compared to other post-speech media reactions. Maddow's MSNBC running mate Chris Matthews denigrated the reference to MS-13 gang-bangers as "very ugly." He was referring to the president's words, not the killers themselves.

Over on CNN, one-time Obama aide and former proud communist Van Jones said the president "was selling sweet-tasting candy with poison in it."

Another delusional CNN reporter put forth a truly bizarre analysis of Melania Trump. According to Kate Bennett, the First Lady was wearing off-white to protest her husband's policies toward women. Yes, she was serious.

ABC's Cecila Vega claimed the president was "stoking" racial tension when he contended that the National Anthem should be respected. And MSNBC's hate-filled Joy Reid actually mocked President Trump for praising church, family, police, and military. You know, all those awful things that so many progressives regard as symbols of "AmericaKKKan" oppression.

Now, no one expected the Democrats to be standing and cheering. They got their backsides handed to them last fall and have failed to destroy President Trump's momentum since despite a fake Russian collusion effort that is beginning to look more and more each day like a political boomerang that is going to take down some of the party's highest leaders.

To be fair Republicans were stoic and silent when President Obama put forth his progressive promises.

But this Tuesday night went way beyond anything we have seen before.

Members of the not-so-loyal opposition party, perhaps taking their cues from exceptionally dour Nancy Pelosi, failed to cheer higher wages, the defeat of ISIS, or even historically low black unemployment.

It was reported she delivered a stern warning to House Democrats attending the speech during a closed-door caucus meeting on Tuesday, imploring them to play nice. There were numerous live shots of her sitting their stone faced and scowling at the President. In one segment she was shown chastising a Democratic lawmaker behind her for clapping.

God knows what she said to Joe Manchin, D-WV, who was caught on camera clapping a few seconds throughout the speech then realizing he was a Democrat and quickly stopping. Politics makes clowns of men who fear a woman from San Francisco who hates Trump more than she will ever love America.

For what it's worth the American people felt differently. According to a CNN snap poll, 70% of viewers had a "very positive" or "somewhat positive" reaction to the speech. A poll taken by CBS found that 75% of those who watched the State of the Union approved of what they had heard. Those are not quite right-wing television networks!

All this raises one extremely important question: What will Democrats run on in the upcoming midterm elections?

The party seems confident that it will retake the House, but based on what policies? Their number one issue at the moment seems to be raw hatred of President Trump. That may win some votes in far-left precincts, but not enough to win a House majority. Americans are just not that infused with vitriol.

The Democrats' other major priority seems to be unfettered illegal immigration. They don't freely admit that, but just look at the parts of President Trump's immigration plan to which they object.

The Dems say they want protection for DACA recipients, and the White House has offered that in spades. But they object to curtailing chain migration and booed when the president brought it up. Unlike most Americans, Democrats don't want to end the Diversity Visa Lottery, and they truly loathe the idea of building a border wall.

So on what will they campaign? Rescinding the tax cuts? Reinstating burdensome federal regulations? Bringing back the individual Obama Care mandate?

Right now they can only hope that special counsel Robert Mueller comes up with something bad, really bad. If his investigation ends without a searing indictment of President Trump himself, the promise of impeachment will fall by the wayside. And I'd submit to you tonight that is looking less likely by the minute!

They also want the president to damage himself with some ill-conceived tweets or comments, which is certainly within the realm of possibility. But Trump's core supporters always seem to forgive and quickly forget.

Anything is possible in politics. The Dems may very well take back the House, possibly even the Senate. But they did NOTHING to help their chances Tuesday night. Sitting like angry, spoiled, petulant children is not a winning election strategy.

If I'm a Republican strategist for ANY of those running for election, I'm keeping a tape of these moments from Tuesday night and running those moments over and over and over and over. Then I'd run them again! Mark my word we here in middle America won't forget those moments!
 

Here are a few.

Here was one statement that drew silence from the Dems:

"Tonight, I call on all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground, and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people," Trump said. "This is really the key. These are the people we are elected to serve."

The call was met with one of more than 100 rounds of applause - but from just one side of the aisle. While Trump has undeniably contributed to the division in Washington, the images of petulant partisans seething at feel-good rhetoric was jarring for many observers.

The Dems response was met with Twitter fire! Even a former Trump hater, pollster Frank Luntz, asked the following:

"Why are @TheDemocrats not applauding job growth, higher wages and the drop in Latino and African-American unemployment?" pollster Frank Luntz asked in a tweet. "I thought economic success is good for everyone regardless of party."

Rep. Luis Gutierrez walked out after chants of "USA, USA!" erupted in the House chamber of the Capitol Building. After the speech, the Illinois Democrat quipped that, "whoever translated it for him from Russian did a good job."  That wasn't missed either.
 

Democrats refused to stand during the address when Trump honored two families whose children were killed by MS-13 members as well as honoring Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise who Trump praised for his resolve in returning to work less than four months after he “took a bullet” from a gunman and "almost died" thanks to a deranged Bernie supporter.

That too lit up Twitter:

Katie Pavlich
@KatiePavlich
Entire row of Democrats refusing to stand for family whose two girls were murdered by MS-13 #SOTU

It got worse. They chose not join in the applause for a 12-year-old boy in the gallery whom Trump praised for putting flags on soldiers’ graves on Veterans Day.

“Preston's reverence for those who have served our nation reminds us why we salute our flag, why we put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance, and why we proudly stand for the national anthem,” he said.

That was a jab at the NFL's utter disrespect for the nation over the past few years by many players who knelt during the National Anthem.

“Democrats are no longer just the party of resistance and obstruction, they are now also the party of sitting on their hands,” said the Republican National Committee. “No matter the issue, Democrats chose to sit on their hands tonight.”

They sat on their hands Tuesday night indeed. They did so not just against Donald Trump, but against America.

There were three notable exceptions among Democrat senators. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., all red state Democrats facing tough re-election bids in November, stood and applauded multiple times.

Democrats tapped Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., the grandson of Sen. Robert Kennedy, to deliver the party’s official response to Trump. In remarks before a small audience in Massachusetts, Kennedy said many in the country have spent Trump’s first year in office “anxious, angry, afraid.”

“Folks, it would be easy to dismiss this past year as chaos,” he said. “As partisanship, as politics. But it's far, far bigger than that. This administration isn't just targeting the laws that protect us, they're targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection.”

I'm not sure what America Kennedy has been living in the past 12 months. It's certainly not the one that is roaring back on every level. Memo to little Kennedy boy. 75% of the nation disagreed with your assessment of the speech.

Earlier Tuesday, during a pre-speech lunch with television anchors, Trump -- who does not shy away from conflict with his detractors -- said “unity is really what I'm striving for, to bring the country together."

"If I could unite this country, I would consider it a tremendous success,” Trump said. “I would love to be able to bring back our country in a great form of unity, without a major event - very tough to do. I would like to do it without a major event, because that major event is usually a bad thing.”

The Democratic lawmakers who actually came out looking the best this week were John Lewis, Barbara Lee, Frederica Wilson, and a handful of others. They skipped the speech and were thus not seen disrespecting the President in person. Maybe the whole Democratic Party should have stayed home. Tick tock.

Christopher McDonald, Publisher, Editor in Charge

Great Smoky Mountain Journal