I’m going to let you in on a little secret about life here at HermanCain.com. Each year, when the President delivers his State of the Union Address, Dan Calabrese and I roll our eyes, sigh, and watch it because we have to. The speech is invariably a tedious piece of over-long theater – heavy on platitudes, light on specifics, derided by one party and praised by another. The opposition response is usually even worse. We don’t want to subject ourselves to it, but we tune in because it’s part of the job.
Believe me, regardless of who the President is, we’d both rather be doing just about anything else. In fact, we’ve often wondered why the country doesn’t go back to the ‘good ol’ days,’ when the State of the Union was just a letter delivered to Congress. Now, for completely self-serving reasons, Nancy Pelosi is wondering the same thing.
She’s penned a letter to the President, asking him to delay the SOTU until the shutdown has ended. In it, she notes that up until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the address was submitted in writing and that was that. No pomp, no circumstance, and no media hissy fit.
News: @SpeakerPelosi letter to President Trump suggesting he move State of the Union until after government re-opens – or submit his speech in writing instead – due to Shutdown effect in DHS and Secret Service, via @FoxReports & @arogDC: pic.twitter.com/CPMvjm7shr
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) January 16, 2019
Pelosi claims she wants the delay, or a written submisison, because of security concerns. As she puts it:
“Both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now — with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs.
Sadly, given the security concerns and unless the government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for your to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to Congress on January 29th.”
If you believe that this is about security, well, I feel sorry for you. Pelosi isn’t the least bit concerned with safety here. This is nothing more than a “Hail Mary” designed to forestall an evening where the President will, without question, make his case for the wall and blast Democrats for the shutdown.
Last year, President Trump’s SOTU speech went on for a whopping hour and twenty minutes. You can be sure that Dems don’t want to give him another 90 unfettered minutes to trash their ongoing recalcitrance. Unfortunately for Pelosi, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to work.
The Daily Caller has an exclusive quotefrom Donald Trump Jr., which suggests the White House knows exactly what she’s up to.
“Speaker Pelosi is clearly attempting to block my father from giving his State of the Union speech, not because 20 percent of the government is shut down, but because she is terrified of him having another opportunity to speak directly to the American people about her party’s obstruction, unfiltered and without her friends in the media running interference for her.
Pelosi correctly recognizes that the more President Trump shines a spotlight on the very real human tragedies that occur because of her and her party’s open border policies, the more of a political loser it becomes for them.”
As much as Dan and I might like to see the nation return to an easily-ignored writtenState of the Union, Don Jr. is right. Democrats hate it when Trump speaks directly to the American people beacuse, as we saw in 2016, it has a tendency to work.
Via WesternJournal
