{"id":596,"date":"2013-02-12T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/12\/republicans-to-offer-competing-response-to-sotu"},"modified":"2013-02-12T20:11:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T20:11:00","slug":"republicans-to-offer-competing-response-to-sotu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=596","title":{"rendered":"Republicans to offer competing response to SOTU"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is going to offer the official Republican response to President Obama\u2019s State of the Union message tonight.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019ll be followed by another Republican senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, who\u2019s going to give the tea party response. <\/p>\n<p>Huh? What gives here? <\/p>\n<p>Rubio was elected in 2010 after a bruising campaign in Florida and after which he was ordained as the golden boy of the GOP\u2019s tea party wing. He\u2019s conservative, \u201ctelegenic\u201d (which is code for \u201chandsome\u201d), smart and eloquent. Rubio does a fine job, in my view, of representing the Republicans\u2019 new brand, which is a sort of in-your-face conservatism that seems to play well with the party\u2019s hard-core base voters.<\/p>\n<p>Rubio\u2019s response ought to be enough to satisfy the Loyal Opposition, yes? Apparently not.<\/p>\n<p>Now up steps Sen. Paul, who\u2019s considerably less graceful verbally than his colleague, Rubio. It was Paul, you\u2019ll remember, who told then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that had he been president at the time of the Benghazi, Libya attack that killed four people this past September, he would have \u201crelieved you of your post.\u201d To which many millions of Americans, myself included, laughed out loud at the very idea of a President Rand Paul.<\/p>\n<p>All this double-dip Republican response to a Democratic president\u2019s State of the Union speech only illustrates the conflict that\u2019s raging within the once-proud \u201cParty of Lincoln.\u201d Indeed, Honest Abe likely is spinning in his grave.<\/p>\n<p>I find it rather sad.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is going to offer the official Republican response to President Obama\u2019s State of the Union message tonight. He\u2019ll be followed by another Republican senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, who\u2019s going to give the tea party response. Huh? What gives here? Rubio was elected in 2010 after a bruising campaign in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=596\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Republicans to offer competing response to SOTU<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}