By Todd Lassa
Republican Response
Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has never come up as a potential presidential candidate for 2024. She did not receive one straw in last weekend’s poll at CPAC in Orlando. Conversely, Reynolds did not have to gulp down gallons of water during her GOP response in Des Moines to President Biden’s first State of the Union address, like Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) in his response to President Obama in 2013. Nor was she an absolute disaster, like ex-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, also in response to Obama, but in 2011.
She may have a future as a running mate. Reynolds’ politics appears to fit somewhere between Trump-tolerant Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) and the faithful pro-Trump MAGA-right – a preternatural Glenn Younkin.
Reynolds hit on the expected talking points to counter Biden’s State of the Union address. The president promised to move the country forward, she said, but instead has taken us back to the 1970s and early ‘80s with four-decade-high inflation in the U.S.
Biden also favored “political correctness instead of military readiness,” Reynolds said, with a response toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that’s “too little, too late.” The White House’s “anti-energy policies” have driven up prices at the pump by 50%, she said. “You don’t have to check grocery prices,” the governor said, “just step outside the D.C. bubble.”
Reynolds characterized Biden’s spending plans as “giveaways” to millionaires and billionaires “in California, New York and New Jersey.” Good thing Build Back Better did not pass “because of President Biden’s own party,” she added, referring to Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Krysten Sinema (AZ).
But the Iowa governor spent much of her time criticizing the Biden administration for trying to force mask mandates on public school students while Republican governors were allowing parents the right to determine what their children are taught. She did not mention Critical Race Theory (which is not taught below the college level anywhere) by name.
Reynolds’ GOP counterpoint to Biden’s State of the Union address stands out for not in any way standing out; She checked all the boxes in the list of Fox News nation grievances – repeating recent Republican talking points on Ukraine and inflation even as Biden’s address had anticipated them – without a full embrace of Donald J. Trump’s MAGA movement and with none of the sort of gaffes that once made Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio stand out for their awkwardness.
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Response from the Left – As part of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) Squad Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is a key member of the progressive wing of her party who tilted at President Biden’s Build Back Better windmill last year. Tlaib was chosen to respond to Tuesday’s State of the Union address on behalf of the Working Families Party, although unlike the GOP response, which was carried on all the major networks shortly after Biden concluded his hour-long speech, hers was on YouTube (which carries perhaps a hipper, cut-the-cable vibe these days).
The purpose of Tlaib’s response was to revive Biden’s BBB plan, last sticker-priced in the $2-trillion neighborhood. Democrats have roughly eight months to get tranches of the plan passed (as Biden already has announced he push “big chunks” of it this year). For the Squad and the Working Families Party, that means reviving the Child Tax Credit first.
Tlaib did her cause no favors by calling out as the “two forces” that stopped BBB in 2021 – all 50 Republicans and “just enough corporate-backed Democrats” to “make them succeed.”
Manchin and Sinema, of course. And now progressive Democrats want “Manchinema” to get on board this year and provide the necessary plus-Vice President Harris majority to pass “big chunks” of BBB, after Reynolds’ shout out in the Republican response.
On Build Back Better, big chunks or otherwise, look to 2022 to be much like 2021.