This Week Has Spectacularly Backfired On Republicans

From the SOTU to two high profile House hearings, everything has gone wrong for Republicans this week.

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Biden Embarrasses Republicans At The State Of The Union

(The research and idea for today’s newsletter came from our own Sarah Jones, who you can follow on Twitter @PoliticusSarah.)

Speaker Kevin McCarthy knew what was coming from President Biden at the State of the Union. He asked the President to please not call his caucus extreme MAGA. He told his caucus that they needed to behave themselves in front of the President Of The United States and the world. McCarthy told the press that he believed his Republicans got the message and would behave.

Biden didn’t use the term ‘extreme MAGA,’ but House Republicans went off the rails.

As The New York Times summarized, “Mr. McCarthy was left to visibly shush his colleagues over and over from his seat behind the president. He spent much of the speech glumly leaning back like an assistant principal at an unruly school assembly.”

Biden spontaneously outwitting House Republicans on Social Security and Medicare was the big policy moment, but the behavior of House Republicans has reverberated for days. The lingering impression from the State Of The Union has been centered on the behavior of House Republicans, which sabotaged the GOP’s intended change in tone where they were supposed to stand up to Biden.

Immediately after the SOTU, Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave her dark and bizarre SOTU rebuttal. Sanders spoke that she was talking to a Fox News audience, not the entire nation. Only the viewers who are avid consumers of conservative media had any idea of what she was talking about. Her rebuttal was a rehash of Trump’s talking points, and all of the failed messages from the midterm election.

The rebuttal was another Republican fail, but as you will see below, Republicans were just getting warmed up.