If you thought the left was disappointed with the State of the Union…

January 25, 2007

For the president’s critics, the State of the Union was a boring disappointment, filled with half-truths and missed opportunities. He defended an indefensible policy in Iraq; he made ridiculous budget claims, he ignored Katrina reconstruction, and he unveiled awful (and largely rehashed) health care and energy policies. There wasn’t much to like.

But as it turns out, Bush’s allies were even less impressed. Here’s an item that was sent to Focus on the Family’s membership yesterday afternoon.

Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for American Values, said the president aimed at the wrong target.

“Frankly, his speech was really a reaction to his critics and to the Democratic House and Senate leadership,” she said. “They are the ones who want to talk about global warming. They are the ones who want to say that Iraq is in a shambles. He lost a golden opportunity to set the stage — to describe the issues that were most important to the American people.”

Hamrick said Bush, who has two years left in the White House, was trying to be pragmatic but shouldn’t have leaned so far toward the liberals.

Yes, the GOP base thought the State of the Union was geared towards the left.

In fact, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins unveiled a YouTube video blasting Bush for his misguided priorities.

“This call to strengthen our union is inseparable from the need to strengthen the American family and the culture in which we raise our children,” Perkins said. “I applaud the president’s leadership as he refused to surrender his role as commander in chief to the new majority, and take the fight to a determined enemy. However, that same clear and concise determination to defend the culture of America here was missing. I believe the president failed in challenging the new majority to join him in addressing core family and cultural issues…. The president failed to draw a line in the sand on behalf of life.”

Perkins’ FRC also unveiled a chart with words they wanted to hear, but were omitted from the address, including “marriage,” “values,” “abstinence,” “cloning,” and “stem cells.” (Perkins added that his criticism didn’t satisfy his staff, who said he was being “way too kind.”)

And that’s just the theocratic wing of the GOP base. The economic conservatives were just as upset.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

“I think the president left a lot of conservatives shaking their heads” by avoiding the issues atop their agenda, said Bill Lauderback, executive vice president at the American Conservative Union.

Yesterday morning, the weekly meeting of conservatives that is convened by antitax activist Grover Norquist, a White House ally, was marked by “tense exchanges” with administration press secretary Tony Snow over border enforcement and Mr. Bush’s immigration proposals, according to conservative activists.

Conservatives are becoming more openly critical, adding to the president’s woes and emboldening Democrats for battles ahead. Increasingly, they are looking beyond Mr. Bush for a new standard-bearer, though no one in Republicans’ emerging 2008 presidential field has yet captured conservatives.

The conservative crack-up continues.

Before the Religious Right reared its ridiculous head, I had sympathy for religion. Now I want them all to lead miserable lives. Sounds like they’re heading toward impotence and irrelevance.

  • I applaud the president’s leadership as he refused to surrender his role as commander in chief to the new majority, and take the fight to a determined enemy.

    You know, I got into a near yelling match this morning with the wingnuts with whom I work (they started the thing, and I finished it) about the bullshit “culture of life” issue and how it relates to war.

    The five of them were saying how evil abortion was because it killed innocent people. I pointed out that the thousands of innocent post-birth humans have been killed in Iraq.

    Them: “That’s just a side effect of war.”
    Me: “Well, a fetus is a side effect of sex.”
    Them: “But it’s INNOCENT!”
    Me: “No more than someone who just happened to be born in a country we decided to attack.”
    Them: “BUT THEIR JUST BABIES IN THE WOMB!” (they literally yelled at me).
    Me: “So … location decides who is innocent and who is not? Either it’s killing innocent life, or it’s not. Period. Or is killing brown people more acceptable than the fetus of a white woman?”
    Them: “You don’t get it!!” (Someone called me a baby killer … seriously.)
    Me: “And you can never, ever again accuse anyone of ‘moral relativism. In the mean time, keep your rosaries out my wife’s ovaries and shut the fuck up.”

    Perkins obviously has the same belief — that an action that leads to the death of thousands of innocent people is okay during war, but a woman wanting control over her own body — even after being raped — is wrong.

    It’s pretty odd, since I don’t remember an asterisk after the phrase “Thou shalt not kill.”

    On a related note: anyone looking to hire a writer with a decade of experience? My rates are pretty reasonable …

    🙂

  • I knew the radicals xtians would gripe. Guess what Fuckup on the Family folks? You were used. Cozened like a drunk sorority babe until you handed over your precious vote and then “Yeah, I’ll call you. Later.”

    Maybe next time you’ll practice a little abstinence and restraint when it comes to voting, you pack of cheap whores.

    tAiO

    P.S. “So … location decides who is innocent and who is not?” Nice riff on Sam Browncrack’s comment at the We Luv Life Rally. Excellent rebuttal of a fetus fetishist. We’ll over look the grammar errors.

  • So, to summarize the SOTU reaction:

    Democrats – you sucked

    DFHs – you sucked

    Christo-Taliban – you sucked

    The Norqist-Abramoff movement – you sucked

    The Corner @ NRO:

    Derbyshire: “The President is carrying it off very well, though—he doesn’t look at all like a guy whose poll ratings are in the tank. I’m remembering why I voted for him.”

    “Played to his strengths, hit good conservative bases”

    Podhoretz: “It was a much better speech than anyone expected.”

    Robinson: “the words and performance of George W. Bush […] proved better—dramatically better—than we had any reason to expect.”

    “Reaganesque”

    Huh.

  • No surprises here. The Christian extremists have always blamed all of the world’s woes on liberals and Democrats. It’s only natural that they should blame us for the failings of their guy too.

  • “So … location decides who is innocent and who is not?”

    Oh, not only location, but also race, nationality, social/financial status, and religion.

    “..they are looking beyond Mr. Bush for a new standard-bearer, though no one in Republicans’ emerging 2008 presidential field has yet captured conservatives…”

    I’m putting my money on Brownback. Maybe with Pat Roberts from Kansas as my darkhorse.

  • “Frankly, his speech was really a reaction to his critics and to the Democratic House and Senate leadership,” she said. “They are the ones who want to talk about global warming. They are the ones who want to say that Iraq is in a shambles. He lost a golden opportunity to set the stage — to describe the issues that were most important to the American people.” — Kristi Hamrick

    And she sees no relationship between what’s most important to the American people and the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate? Hellloooo? Does she think the House and the Senate were delivered to the Democrats by a stork?

    But, the more the right-nuts unite in dumping on Bu..Sh.. and splinter everywhere else, I won’t be complaining 🙂

  • So with these factions of the right appearing to cleave away from Bush, who’s left as his base? Looks like the Cheney family and Halliburton.

    “They are the ones who want to talk about global warming.” Kristi Hamrick. Regretably, actions to confront global warming will also benefit poor Kristi. Maybe if she understood global warming has the potential to abort all human life from the planet she might think otherwise.

  • The Rs face an interesting dilema that McCain and Gulianni are running headlong into. Rove’s base strategy alienates mainstream voters, and anything less radical pisses off the base. So Dem’s, should they be wise enough to realize it, have a grand opportunity before them. As long as they can convince mainstream voters that they are more fit to lead, they’ll force the right to the center and continue pissing off the wingnuts. I know there are some on the left who feel this is an abandonment of liberal ideals, but I’d rather have some progress than none.

  • Lest we not forget, these people are the enemy of what we hold dear. They profitted in extremis from Bush’s regime. You have heard of ‘Good Germans’. Such are they.

  • It does give me a nice, warm-and-fuzzy feeling inside to see the Bushbots throw their own Decider into the microwave, and set the cooking temperature to “high.” Much better than a bus….

  • …though no one in Republicans’ emerging 2008 presidential field has yet captured conservatives.

    Go Brownback. I’ve never donated to a politician before but am seriously considering sending money to his campaign. He’s everything the hard core right could want–and thus the vast majority of the country would see the GOP for the deluded theocrats that they by and large are.

  • “The conservative crack-up continues.”
    Sorry to nit-pick, but shouldn’t this be “The Republican crack-up continues.”?
    There are true conservatives that are unaffiliated and Dems, but I don’t think the Republican’ts have any.

  • Very interesting. I think this kind of coalitional crackup is common when a party has long enjoyed the fruits of power, yet its various factions don’t feel like they’ve gotten everything they wanted. Once the coalition feels besieged, though, I think its factions tend to start swallowing their differences again and focus on trying to get back to the mountaintop.

    These guys, though, seem determined to pursue their own hateful obsessions straight down to the bottom of the well, to complete political irrelevance. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

  • Tony Perkins, who bought David Duke’s mailing list “for my christmas cards”, is on the way back to the tent to roll in the sawdust and play with the rattlesnakes. He’s proof positive of what happens with 10 generations of Southern “inbreeding.”

  • I still can’t figure out how going after bad words, banning stem cell research, banning abortion, banning gay marriage is supposed to “preserve the family” or “change the culture.”
    The Eight-hundred pond Gorilla in the room is that the Religious Right has failed in virtually all its goals, despite the unprecedented access they had the last six years to the hall of power.

    Could it be the American people are getting fed up with the relgious right? In last election issues such as gay marriage barely produced a ripple.

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