Frank Rich as Dick Tracy

As in "no $#it, Dick Tracy".

Basically, this looks much like standard Frank Rich stuff.  "Obama Good, Republicans Bad, TEAbaggers really bad...and stupid".  Rich's comparison of Obama to Reagan and the use of the GE imagery is sickening at best.  Reagan was a free-market capitalist, Obama is a Socialist and statist.  GE is no longer an industry America can be proud of, but rather Immelt and GE signify the worst of crony capitalism: foisting expensive and useless goods on an unwilling public by fiat.

Rich's disdain for all things not Obama is clear in this paragraph:

This time we were spared a “You lie!” But once Obama segued into a rambling laundry list and the “prom night”bipartisan photo ops lost their comic novelty, the night’s storyline inevitably shifted to the reliable diva antics of Michele Bachmann, the founder of the House’s Tea Party Caucus. For all the Republican male establishment’s harrumphing, it couldn’t derail her plan to hijack the party’s designated State of the Union response with one of her own. More Katherine Harris than Sarah Palin, Bachmann is farmore riveting television bait than Paul Ryan, the bland congressman officially assigned the Bobby Jindal memorial slot after the New Jersey governor Chris Christie was savvy enough to take a pass.


It is unfortunate Joe Wilson did not provide us with truth again  this year.  That some Republicans fell for the "Prom Night" trick just tells us there are still too many RINOs.  Paul Ryan is more Reagan than "bland".  But Rich must paint him that way because to discuss his speech on its merits would be a losing proposition for Rich.


Obama must be laughing about how the party that spent a year hammering him for focusing on health care over jobs is now committing the same supposed sin. And one can only imagine his astonishment on Tuesday night, when the G.O.P. respondents to his speech each played Jimmy Carter to his Reagan by offering a grim double-feature of malaise and American decline. Hardly had the president extolled record corporate profits and a soaring stock market in his selectively rosy spin on the economy, than Ryan, who has the television manner of a solicitous funeral home director, was darkly warning that America could be the next Greece. Bachmann channeled Glenn Beck to argue that we are living in a nascent police state where government “tells us which light bulbs to buy” (G.E.’s, presumably).


Here, Rich is trying to infer that "all is well" while Republicans sound the alarm over the deficit, debt and spending of the Feds.  I would hardly call the stock market "soaring" as it is not yet even close to its pre-recession highs.  The housing market is still a disaster and Fannie and Freddie are mired in bad debt and corruption.  While Ireland, Greece and others are being bailed out by the other Euros, there IS no one to bail the US out of debt approaching 100% of GDP.  Rich seems to think that's OK.  It's not.


The TEA party activists are wagging the dog, as it should be.  The TEA Party got the GOP back in the majority.  A majority of Americans identify with the same issues.  The expectation is that Boehner, McConnell and the rest will do what we sent them to do.  Get it back under control.  Reduce the size and scope of government and put the people back in charge.  Not GE, not the SEIU, not the EPA.  10th Amendment stuff.  That is what we expect.