By Deborah Houston | The president gave his final State of the Union address. I’d no intention of watching. Presidents always say how they did a bang-up job the previous year and the State of our Union remains strong. Ditto Obama. I almost clicked over to an old 60s sitcom, but Speaker of the House Paul Ryan caught my eye. Shifting in his seat behind Obama, Ryan’s adroit facial expressions entertained me. Raised eyebrows and a slight smirk demonstrated he wasn’t grooving to the president’s words.
Then surprise! South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley began the Republican post-state response. She had me at hello, stating with candor, “Much like America as a whole, ours is a state with a rich and complicated history.” Darn right, Governor. The first shot fired in the Civil War came from your shore. A Georgian myself, I commiserated with her characterization of a southern state.
Logical words, phrased with elegance and warmth followed. I loved when she said, “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation.”
I agreed wholeheartedly. After a year of mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and bitter racial tensions, the nation needs to pull together.
The next day, much to my consternation, angry voices on the right were even angrier – with Haley. How dare she target Donald Trump! “It’s the first time in my life,” Rush Limbaugh said, “I can remember the response to the State of the Union not going after the president but rather going off the front runner of, in this case, her own party.”
At first I thought Rush was wrong. We conservatives have the thinnest of skins sometimes, believing every arrow is aimed at us.
Then Haley confessed. Yes, the barbs were aimed at Trump, she said. What had seemed like a classy speech at first had been nothing more than a cheap shot, the more I thought about it.
Which forces the question: When will the Republican establishment ever challenge the Democratic Party? The fact they’d rather not, gives me a familiar sinking feeling from campaigns past. The RNC will lose the 2016 election as surely as it did the 2008 and 2012.
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