The State Of The Union, As Well As The GOP

I allow for the fact that President Obama and I are on the same side of the political fence in saying this.  But I still say, without hesitation, that his State of the Union address is the best one I've ever heard.  Not just from him.  The best one I've ever heard.  Period.

I obviously attribute part of that opinion to the fact that he's stopped apologizing to the opposition party and the nation for being a Democrat.  That was, as Richard Nixon might have said, perfectly clear in his second Inaugural Address, and it was no less true in the SOTU address.  But what particularly impressed me was the skillful way he reduced the political profile of the Republicans down to a single word:  obstruction.  I honestly believe that his demand for "a simple vote" on behalf of the victims of gun violence will be remembered by historians as well as voters.

But no less gratifying to me was this, spoken by Obama subsequently in the context of stopping the sequester (and more about that later).  I've been saying for years that Republicans are defined not by limited government, militarism, social values and/or free markets (in other words, all the things to which they pay nothing more than lip service).  They are, and always will be, defined by one thing and one thing only:  economic royalism.  This explains the philosophical comeback of Ayn Rand, the patron saint of economic royalists.  And yet, for the first time in I don't know how long, a leader of the Democratic Party puts it out there and stands behind it.  It's enough to make me look for the proverbial flock of pigs circling Hell and filling up ice buckets.

And yet, for me, it's still not quite enough.

Because, operationally, the GOP is defined by one more thing:  taking credit, even when it isn't due.  That, of course, was most laughably apparent as the Cold War ended, and conservative pundits went through no fewer than three stages of denial:  (a) The Cold War is not ending; (b) The Cold War is not ending, but whatever is happening is bound to be bad for the U.S.; (c) The Cold War is over, and Reagan deserves all of the credit for it.

This propensity is reflected in the recent behavior of Senator Marco Rubio, anointed by what's left of print media as the Next Big Thing in GOP politics.  (Or, at the very least, its Next Big Gulp.)  Actually, I'm not talking about the swig seen 'round the world.  I'm talking about this.

Why would you argue that the President's immigration proposals are different than yours, even when they're not?   Because you're a prospective Presidential candidate, looking to be an ethnic pioneer in the field, and you're desperately trying to position yourself as the author of whatever compromise emerges from the current immigration debate in Washington.  Perhaps you can even get it called the Marco Rubio Immigration Act of 2013, if you're lucky.

I don't think Rubio is going to be successful in this regard.  I don't even think it's a mortal lock that he will be the GOP nominee in 2016.  But he does help to illustrate what his party is all about.  As well as why, after 30-plus years, we need to break its death grip on our politics.