Yair Rosenberg: Republicans Keep Underestimating Joe Biden

Joe Biden knows how to handle a tough crowd. This was evident last night at the State of the Union, and it was apparent to me seven years ago, on March 20, 2016. On that day, President Barack Obama sent Biden to sell the recently struck Iran nuclear deal to the national conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This was the political equivalent of asking the vice president to push New York Times subscriptions at a Donald Trump rally. Over the previous year, AIPAC had spent every ounce of its political capital to oppose Obama’s accord with Iran, which it cast as an existential threat to Israel. Obama, for his part, had implied that opponents of the deal were effectively pro-war. As 18,000 AIPAC delegates converged on Washington, Biden was dispatched to defend the administration to a crowd whose feelings ranged from skeptical to hostile. To call this a thankless task would be to woefully understate the animosity in the arena.

What happened next was remarkable: Biden somehow won over the room. He turned on his well-honed political charm, flattered the audience, and spoke passionately about his personal attachment to Israel, and by the time he got to the unpopular nuclear deal, he had the crowd applauding for it. He exited to a standing ovation.

That same Biden was on full display last night. Not known for the eloquence of his oratory, the president instead spoke conversationally to Congress and the cameras. Folksy rather than formal, and straightforward rather than stentorian, the president exceeded expectations, as even some critics acknowledged. It was quite effective as a rhetorical ploy, the conservative Jeffrey Blehar wrote in National Review. Biden played a losing economic and electoral-polling hand with the public as deftly as possible … by leaning into his retail political skills, 50 years of memorized blue-collar schtick, and the laughter and encouragement of the friendly half of the room. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/republicans-keep-underestimating-joe-biden/672997/

David Frum: How Biden successfully baited Congressional Republicans

Nowhere was Biden’s skill more apparent than in his interactions with those who sought to derail him. At several points during his address, he was confronted by a chorus of hecklers led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Observing this spectacle, some pundits tut-tutted at the incivility. But Biden seemed to enjoy it. Far from being flustered by the interruptions, he was energized by them. When the hecklers called Biden a liar for stating that some Republicans wanted to sunset Social Security and Medicare, he quipped, I enjoy conversion, and proceeded to get the entire chamber to applaud for preserving the programs, turning his critics into props in his performance. We got unanimity! he crowed. As the chamber clapped, Biden looked presidential at his podium. Greene, shouting ineffectually from the back while draped in an ostentatious white fur coat, looked like she’d just lost her last Dalmatian.

Anyone who’d witnessed Biden at AIPAC, or in similar situations over his long career, would not have been surprised by his ability to roll with the rhetorical punches. But Biden’s Republican critics clearly did not anticipate his nimble response, for a very simple reason: They continue to underestimate the man they seek to replace.

Since the 2020 Democratic primary, Biden’s secret weapon has been the low expectations set for him by his opponents. Rather than approach him as the flawed but formidable politician that he is, Biden’s critics on the left and right have consistently presented him as a befuddled individual who is unable to finish his sentences. They have cocooned themselves in clips of his gaffes, both real and fabricated, and convinced themselves that the Biden they see in their social-media bubble is the Biden that exists in actuality.

The only problem with this caricature is that it does not survive contact with reality. It’s true that at 80 years old, Biden is no longer as adept an operator as he once was. He speaks slower and struggles more to control his stutter. And of course, he has been prone to comical verbal stumbles his entire career. But Biden’s experience working a crowd, his empathetic human touch, and his sense of humor remain intact. His ability to unite disparate factions of a fractured party remains undiminished. It’s no wonder that a handful of unruly political neophytes at the State of the Union failed to knock him off his game. He’s been playing it for longer than they’ve been alive.

The refusal to acknowledge and contend with Biden’s strengths, not just his weaknesses, continues to hobble his opponents. By consistently lowering the bar for the president’s performance, they have repeatedly enabled him to easily vault over it. As much as anything Biden himself has done, this persistent misapprehension of his capacity has fueled his surprisingly productive presidency.

Consider this history: During the 2020 primary, Biden was dogged by left-wing critiques of his competency. Some supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders pointedly pushed talking points arguing that the former vice president was mentally unfit for office. One candidate, Julián Castro, even wrongly claimed on the debate stage that Biden had forgotten what he’d said several minutes ago. Biden proceeded to sweep the Super Tuesday primaries and claim the Democratic nomination.

And yet, rather than learn from this experience, Biden’s Republican opponents have replicated it, casting the president as a walking vegetable unaware of his surroundings, only to have him upstage them. Maybe Biden isn’t the one who’s forgetting things after all? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/republicans-keep-underestimating-joe-biden/672997/

Megan Garber: George Santos, the GOP’s Useful Liar

After President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address last night, George Santos offered his appraisal of the proceedings. SOTU category is: GASLIGHTING! the representative pronounced in a tweet.

The review was curious, coming as it did from a man who has fabricated much of his own biography. And the tweet, Trumpian in both look and tone, provoked precisely the replies you might expect under the circumstances: sarcastically invented references to Santos’s experience as the host of Jeopardy, to his own State of the Union speech, to his status as a gaslight incarnate. The replies were tidy reflections of the attitude that many Americans have adopted toward Santos, as journalists have reported on the lies he has told about his past and as polls have been conducted about those revelations. One of the few things we can agree on in these divided times, it seems, is that George Santos is a national embarrassment.

Because of all that, Santos is typically discussed as a problem for the Republican party. He is, in fact, the opposite. His lies make convenient distractions from the more dangerous and insidious fabrications that flow with impunity from the mouths and keyboards of his colleagues. Santos has found himself on the receiving end of that time-honored strain of American political discourse: mockery. Late-night shows and Saturday Night Live and the amateur comedians of social media have steadily converted him from an object of shame to one of ridicule. The jokes might seem to be a sign that Americans, understanding that democracy cannot exist without common facts, have no tolerance for leaders who would try to mislead their constituents. But their censure offers false catharsis. Santos is instead a figure fit for our post-fact political environment: a useful liar.

While Santos navigates his infamy, Americans’ lives are being shaped by ever more insidious—and, at the same time, ever more blatant—attempts to upend the shared facts of our lives. Florida’s governor has been hard at work ensuring that the state’s students will not have access to the full truths of American history—or, for that matter, the full truths of the American present. Books are being banned from schools and libraries; hate speech and its bigoted fictions are spreading on social-media platforms; Trump, the biggest liar of them all, is embarking on his campaign for another presidency. He has a chance of winning. You don’t belong here, Mitt Romney reportedly told Santos last night. The senator is correct: Santos should not remain in Congress. But Santos is neither the beginning nor the end of the matter. He is merely a symptom of our chronic disorder. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/02/state-of-the-union-george-santos-republican-useful-liar/672992/

Eugene Robinson: The Republican clown-car caucus is undermining itself

On Wednesday, Republicans’ first made-for-television, MAGA-themed public hearing fizzled and then backfired. The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), set out to prove the conspiracy theory that Big Tech social media companies have colluded with Democrats and the deep state to censor conservative views. But the former Twitter executives they hauled in to testify told a different story.

As the company acknowledged at the time, Twitter was wrong to briefly squelch an October 2020 story from the New York Post involving a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. But the suppression lasted only one day, witnesses said, and was both imposed — and lifted — in an internal attempt to follow company policy. There were no orders from the FBI, as Republicans have claimed.

But one of the former Twitter executives, Anika Collier Navaroli, said she knew of a government attempt to censor content: In 2019, she testified, a White House official leaned on the company — unsuccessfully — to take down a tweet by model Chrissy Teigen that insulted then-President Donald Trump in vulgar terms. Navaroli also testified that when Trump posted a tweet that clearly violated a policy against demonizing immigrants, Twitter relaxed the rule to avoid having to paste a warning label on the offending missive.

A former Twitter employee testified on Feb. 8 to the House Oversight committee that the company changed its policy to allow President Trump’s offensive tweets. 

Meanwhile, MAGA loudmouths on the committee made sure that no one could confuse the hearing with an actual search for truth. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) threatened the former Twitter execs with arrest. Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) complained endlessly about their own accounts being shadow-banned.

I try to keep track of polls that show what issues U.S. voters care most about. The alleged shadow-banning of Boebert and Greene doesn’t show up on any of those lists, I’m afraid.

Oh, I forgot to mention that there was a brief power outage in the committee room during the hearing, and that Twitter had some system issues later in the day. Coincidence? tweeted Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Tex.) Uh, yes. Except maybe in the MAGA twilight zone.

You might think that all of this amounts to enough Republican self-sabotage for one week. But you would be wrong. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/09/republican-antics-congress-self-sabotage/

Dana Milbank: The Republican clown-car caucus is undermining itself

On Thursday, the House Judiciary select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), held its first hearing, with the aim of proving that the FBI and the Justice Department have somehow become … well, I don’t know exactly what, but Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) planned to testify at the hearing, and this is what he wrote in his prepared opening remarks:

They operate as vital partners of the left wing political movement that includes most members of the mainstream media, Big Tech social media giants, global institutions and foundations, Democratic Party operatives and elected officials.
I will posit that every day Republicans spend trying to convince voters that the FBI is part of some global, hydra-headed, Bond-villain leftist cabal is a good day for the Democratic Party.

I can think of ways House Republicans could more profitably go about trying to highlight mistakes or shortcomings of the Biden administration. I suspect that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can, too. But McCarthy owes his job to the MAGA extremists in his caucus, so the GOP majority’s one chance to make a first impression is being squandered on conspiracy theories and personal grievances.

McCarthy can’t afford to alienate any of his members, so he can’t even rid his caucus of a confessed impostor, Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), despite calls by GOP leaders in Santos’s own district for his ouster. Offended by Santos’s presence at the State of the Union, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) confronted him publicly and then later described Santos as a sick puppy.

We need a strong Republican Party, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told me Wednesday. She was serious — and she was right.

I did not share the GOP’s philosophy, back when it had one. But I’ve always believed that progressive ideas are sharper, and progressive policies more effective, when they are challenged by thoughtful conservative ideas and policies.

Right now, we have one center-left political party — the Democrats — and one flaming hot mess of ego, resentment and paranoia. It’s going to be a long two years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/09/republican-antics-congress-self-sabotage/

Andrew Sullivan: William Jefferson Biden Triangulates

I used to hate Bill Clinton’s State of the Union speeches. He’d usually arrive inexcusably late; proceed to hug everyone within touching distance; then blather on for well over an hour about every policy minutia the DC wonk class obsesses over. One year, he was still talking an hour and a half in. Then he’d stay forever afterwards, incapable of saying goodbye, absorbing every milliliter of love he could drain from the crowd, and generally looking like he was having the time of his life.

I was bored silly. But you know what? People loved those speeches. They loved the laundry list of post-big-government specifics, and they loved the way Clinton effortlessly stole most of the right’s policies, while appearing to be far saner and happier than any of them. And as I absorbed Biden’s SOTU this week, it was Bill Clinton who came to mind, the last Democrat who merrily triangulated his way to a landslide re-election. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/william-jefferson-biden-triangulates-d3a

Karoun Demirjian: Heckling of Biden Reflects a New, Coarser Normal for House G.O.P.

The House floor has been no stranger to rowdy spectacle in 2023, but the eruptions of Republican vitriol against President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night underscored a new and notably coarse normal in Congress, where members of the G.O.P. majority tossed aside rules of decorum and turned the annual speech into a showcase for partisan hostility.

The raucous peals of liar, that’s not true and at least one expletive lobbed at Mr. Biden during his 73-minute address dwarfed outbursts during previous such speeches, most of which have been interrupted by a single disturbance, if at all.

The display — captured in images of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, her mouth wide open as she booed and gave a thumbs down to the president — reflected the ethos that has come to define the Republican-led House, where an emboldened right wing that styles itself after former President Donald J. Trump is unapologetic about its antipathy for Mr. Biden and eager to show it in attention-grabbing ways. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/biden-heckling-house-republicans.html

Kurt Bardella: House Republicans launched their big investigations this week. Guess how that went

The House’s new GOP majority is ignoring a key principle I learned during my five years working for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee: Manage expectations. Its "make accusations first, get the facts never" approach to oversight is doomed to over-promise, under-deliver and fall flat with the vast majority of voters.

Knowing all that, you would think congressional Republicans would do their best to ensure that the first hearings would deliver the goods. No such luck.

Republicans used the inaugural hearing of the "Weaponization" committee it to advance baseless conspiracy theories about everyone from Hillary Clinton to Dr. Anthony Fauci. Their star witnesses were Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Fox News personalities Tulsi Gabbard and Jonathan Turley — who, as you might expect, offered no evidence to substantiate GOP claims of bias within the Justice Department. When challenged by Democrats to produce witnesses, documents, notes and transcripts from whistleblowers that would substantiate the accusations, committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) refused.

Their strained efforts to prove there is a there there are backfiring spectacularly and raising serious questions about the basic competence of Jordan and Comer.

The American people have no appetite for such taxpayer-financed witch hunts. Most of the voters who pulled the lever for Republicans in the midterm elections couldn’t care less about a member of the first family who doesn’t even serve in the government. They’re far more concerned about the economy and inflation.

House Republicans have overplayed their hand. Turning congressional hearing rooms into a Fox News set will only expose the new majority as thoroughly out of touch with the American people. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-02-10/house-republicans-investigations-congress-biden-mccarthy

Stuart Stevens: Nikki Haley Threw It All Away

No political figure better illustrates the tragic collapse of the modern Republican Party than Nikki Haley. There was a time not very long ago when she was everything the party thought it needed to win. She was a woman when the party needed more women, a daughter of immigrants when the party needed more immigrants, a young change maker when the party needed younger voters and a symbol of tolerance who took down the Confederate flag when the party needed more people of color and educated suburbanites.

When Donald Trump ran in the 2016 Republican primary, Ms. Haley stood next to Senator Marco Rubio, the candidate she had endorsed, and eviscerated Mr. Trump as a racist the party must reject: “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the K.K.K. That is not a part of our party. That is not who we want as president.” She was courageous, fighting on principle, a warrior who would never back down. Until she did.

The politician who saw herself as a role model for women and immigrants transformed herself into everything she claimed to oppose: By 2021, Ms. Haley was openly embracing her inner MAGA with comments like, “Thank goodness for Donald Trump or we never would have gotten Kamala Harris to the border.” In one sentence, she managed to attack women and immigrants while praising the man she had vowed never to stop fighting. She had gone from saying “I have to tell you, Donald Trump is everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten” to “I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/opinion/nikki-haley-republican-party.html

Jonathan Last: The Trouble with Nikki

A Nikki Haley candidacy is premised on the idea that she is Not Trump. The theory behind this is that the Republican electorate’s preferences in 2024 can be divided into ‘Trump’ and ‘Not Trump’ lanes and that if Haley can win the Not Trump primary and then consolidate those voters, then she can win a head-to-head matchup against Big Orange.

But I want to put this in bold: There is no ‘Not Trump’ lane.

Let me explain. The DeSantis challenge to Trump isn’t that Meatball Ron is ‘Not Trump’—it’s that he’s ‘Trump Plus.’ The DeSantis electoral proposition is that he will give you everything Trump does—all of the fighting, the illiberalism, the culture war, the lib owning, the news cycle domination, the mean tweets.

The only difference is that DeSantis is more electorally viable. In other words, Trump and DeSantis are fighting over the same 85 percent of the Republican electorate.

Nikki Haley and anyone else who jumps in trying to be Not Trump is fighting over the remaining 15 percent. https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/the-trouble-with-nikki

Paul Krugman: The G.O.P.’s Long War Against Medicare and Social Security

First of all, if Republicans had absolutely no desire to make major cuts to America’s main social insurance programs, why would they sunset them — and thus create the risk that they wouldn’t be renewed? As Biden might say, c’mon, man.

And then there’s that historical record. Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/opinion/columnists/republicans-medicare-social-security.html