Early today it was announced that the GOP response to President Obama’s State Of The Union Address would be given by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin:
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan will give the Republicans’ response to the State of the Union address, once again putting the Wisconsin Republican center stage as a foil to President Barack Obama.
Ryan, who has drawn the praise of the president in the past, is “uniquely qualified to address the state of our economy and the fiscal challenges that face our country,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Friday.
The State of the Union rebuttal is always a high profile — yet sometimes risky — opportunity for an up and comer in the opposition party to give a speech on the national stage. With spending cuts and deficit reduction as a top Republican priority this year, Ryan is a natural choice for Republicans. Last year, he laid out a detailed and ambitious “road map” for deficit reduction that left little federal spending untouched — including Social Security — and only a handful of House Republicans publicly backed his spending proposals.
I was actually expecting that the response would end up going to newly elected Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is young, articulate, and represents what some think may be the future of the GOP in 4 or 8 years hence. However, the choice of Ryan seems like a good one, especially since it will be Ryan who will be taking the lead on the spending issues the House Republicans will be dealing with over the next several months.
So, a good choice. Then, this afternoon, I read that Michelle Bachmann has decided to give a “response” of her own:
We thought the speaking lineup for next Tuesday had been finalized, but there’s been a late addition. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) will deliver her own response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, to be webcast by the group Tea Party Express next Tuesday.
The group announced Bachmann’s upcoming remarks in an e-mail to supporters Friday afternoon.
Earlier Friday, Republicans had announced that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee, would deliver the GOP’s response to Obama after the State of the Union address is over. Bachmann’s remarks at TeaPartyExpress.org, apparently, will supplement the GOP response with a tea-party perspective.
I’m pretty sure that this has never happened before, although the fact that Bachmann’s speech will be webcast only means that it will get a far small audience than Ryan, who in turn will probably have a smaller audience than President Obama.
