party away from the hard line on immigration. i m not sure exactly where that is going to lead. but that s the one sort of substantive different that rubio represents from where the republican party has been. in every other substantive way, though, not only was that speech sort of a rehash of what romney offered last year, that was a rehash of where the republicans have been since the 1980 campaign. because the theme of the reagan campaign in 1980 was government is not the solution to your problems. government is the problem. and that was a measure that was geared towards what at that time was the emerging working class, middle class sort of majority in the country. that was southern whites. that was northern white ethnics. in the north it was the outer borough ed koch types. we talked in the last few weeks when he died. they had grievances against the government relating to bussing, to desegregation, relating to welfare programs proliferated in the great society. reagan was really tap
gave desilene victor, 102 years old, a standing ovation. they stood and they cheered her patriotism, the heroism that she showed by waiting all that time in line, by willing to be able to go back. today back home in miami, look at this, desilene victor got another hero s welcome. her friends and her family turned out to meet her at miami international airport with hand-made signs and balloons and flowers, a little bit of dancing even when she flew home from washington, d.c. from having gone to go see the speech. welcome home, desilene, thank you what you have done, miss victor. very nice. the day that she waited so long in line to vote, desilene victor was trying to cast her ballot at the second most busy in all of miami-dade. throughout florida, she was not alone in wanting to vote, in trying to vote, but finding that that simple act of citizenship had in florida become an endurance test.
of the union was essentially a new version of the stump speech of the guy who just lost the presidential election to barack obama. and the house that is the emotional centerpiece of the speech turns out is a house for sale. and the criticism of the criticism of the speech is not based on the president s speech at all. and they had him vote no on the violence against women act with 21 other republican guys right before he gave this speech. and they ran a second republican response again as well after they ran this one. it had the same eyeball problem as the other republican speech had the previous time when they did it. and then of course there was this. false choices like the one the president laid out tonight. if anybody everybody asks you to give the republican party s response to the state of the union just say no. seriously. i care about you. just say no. it s not a good gig. joining us now steve kornacki, host of msnbc s the cycle and a senior writer for salon.com. thanks fo
eyes of the nation is that somebody forgot to de-romneyify the speech itself. our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity. but president obama, he believes it s the cause of our problems. i know free enterprise is on trial, and we have a president who really doesn t believe in the rights of people to do that. of course solar and wind energy should be a part of our energy portfolio. but god also blessed america with abundant coal, oil, and natural gas. i mean, he likes the wind and the solar, but he doesn t like the stuff that is under the ground, like coal and oil and natural gas. instead of wasting more taxpayer money on so-called clean energy companies like solyndra, let s open up more federal lands for safe and responsible exploration. they should have done more studying on solyndra and less studying on that drilling. i m going to open lands for exploration. de-romneyification failed. the republicans official response to barack obama s sta
inevitably a focus on just the physical staging of the response because of the contrast with the president s speech. has there ever been one where the opposite party s response has either risen to the same level as the president s speech or advanced the opposite party s interest? no, no. i can t think of one. the evolution of these things is funny. it wasn t always just one person giving the response. i think the low moment was 1985 when the democrats just lost to reagan and they had bill clinton host this 30-minute infomercial. and they literally packed in every democratic politician in the country for like a 20-second speech. and they had a focus group. they didn t realize at the time that talking about the focus group was political suicide. they kept saying our focus group told us this. they ve tried all different formats. i ve never seen one that actually pulls it off. i almost feel like while there are still i guess two or three more for barack obama, depending. the president