Bob McDonnell Proves to be the Sharpest Tool in the Shed
Wow! Last night, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell demonstrated to the nation that he is indeed one of the sharpest tool in the Republican wood shed. What a good little obstructionist he is fast becoming! Now the whole country knows Virginia is a contributor to the Republican agenda to weigh down President Obama and his agenda to move forward with health care and immigration reform and clean energy job creation.
“Republicans have better ideas than Democrats”, he said. And thus now the entire country now knows that Virginia lives off by itself in a little tool shed distant from the working farm.
Writes Media Matters Action Network in their detailed “Fact Check” report: “While McDonnell’s face may be fresh, his speech repeated a slew of the same old, worn out, debunked Republican talking points.” They detail exactly how McDonnell was 1) wrong on economic recovery, 2) wrong on the budget deficit, 3) wrong on Republican “cooperation”, 4) wrong about Americans’ views toward health care, 5) wrong on the Republican health care “plan”, 6) wrong on energy, and 7) wrong on homeland security.
Virginia Democrats need to pound on McDonnell, repeatedly pointing out exactly how wrong he is. If he continues to be the log jam on our road to recovery we then need to find a way to work around him. Let’s break out of this dark tool shed.
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January 28th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
It was harder to “fact-check” McDonnell’s mini-SOTU because he spoke in such broad generalities and ideological cliches (to worshipful applause by his assembled supporters) and offered very few details of Republican alternatives.
Media Matters did a great job of fact-checking Gov. McDonnell. For those readers who think Media Matters has “liberal bias,” the more nonpartisan Politifact was more selective of the items they chose to evaluate and gave fairly high marks to both President Obama and Gov. McDonnell.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
With a few minor exceptions (supporting offshore drilling and “clean coal”), I thoroughly enjoyed President Obama’s speech. My favorite lines were when President Obama directly addressed Republican Congressmen:
After listing the tax cuts enacted by Democrats, he turned to the Republicans sitting on their hands and said “I expected some applause on that one.”
Later he called them out for their obstructionism: “If the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours, as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.”
January 28th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Did the President refer to nuclear plant development; clean coal, and off-shore exploration? What’s with that????
January 29th, 2010 at 7:24 am
In addition to creating a cap-and-trade mechanism, the climate change bill also boosts federal spending for building nuclear power plants, research on oxymoronic “clean coal,” and more oil leasing in the Gulf of Mexico (not in the Atlantic). Those were “compromises” with the energy corporations.
There are actually quite a few policies that President Obama has implemented or proposed that should appeal to Republicans. He mentioned them in the speech to demonstrate to the TV audience his efforts at bipartisanship. He almost playfully tried to see if he could elicit applause from the Republican side of the aisle. As he pointed out, they wouldn’t even applaud tax cuts. (I think they did applaud nuclear power, though.)