How to Respond to the State of the Union Address
The State of the Union speech is on March 7, and with it comes a chance for Republicans to start setting the 2024 presidential campaign agenda. What should the Republican who replies to Biden’s speech say?
Probably the central point to keep in mind is that Biden may not be the candidate by the time the election rolls around, which means criticism of the last four years should be aimed at the Democrat Party itself at least as much as at Biden.
The number one policy issue is, remarkably, immigration, which is certainly a surprise to Democrats. The single most important point to make is that the border crisis was deliberately created by Biden. When Trump left office in 2020, the border was secure. Now it’s not. And the reason it’s not secure is because Biden changed the rules by executive order on his first day as president. Biden likes the border chaos. He created it. He could stop it with a stroke of a pen. But he won’t.
Democrats don’t see the border as a problem either (except for the next few months during the campaign). They see it, and have seen it, as an opportunity to flood voting booths with millions of potential Democrat voters. That should be made crystal clear. Democrats like Biden’s immigration policy. They don’t care about the gang members who have slipped in or the crimes they have committed, nor do they seem to care about the fentanyl that has killed thousands of Americans—now more than 100,000 a year. Nor do they care about the children who have been sold into child labor or prostitution. All they see are potential voters.
In addition, there is the explicit racial aspect of Biden’s policy. In 2016, Biden himself said about the unrelenting stream of immigration: “Folk like me who are Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017, we’ll be an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority.” And then, “Fewer than 50 percent of the people in America from then and on will be white European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.” It’s Joe Biden and the Democrats who believe in a Great Replacement Theory. Biden said it himself!
But the speech should pivot immediately to the effect illegals will have on the communities where they end up. People who live in gated communities will never see an illegal immigrant—except perhaps working in their garden. It’s the poorest Americans who will suffer—those Americans whom Democrats don’t give two pins for.
The effect on public schools will be substantial (because of the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, which held that illegal immigrants could not be kept out of public schools), and blacks will suffer disproportionally.
That moves the speech seamlessly to public schools, perfidious teacher unions, and statistics on how badly blacks do on tests.
But the second, and critical, point is that Democrats, including Barack Obama when he was president, oppose charter schools and vouchers. In 2002, the Obama administration put an end to the Washington, D.C., school voucher program, which prompted liberal commentator Juan Williams to say: “This is an outrage to me. . . . . This is so important—that you give young people a chance to have an education in America and especially in a failing public school system like you have in the District of Columbia. This voucher system is a direct threat to the unions. And so I think everybody on Capitol Hill, that’s getting money from the NEA or AFT, they should be called on the table.” Amen, brother!
Then the speaker needs to pivot slightly and remind the public, especially blacks, that the Democrat Party was the party of slavery. The Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, was the party that abolished slavery; it was the Republican Party that enabled the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s to be enacted.
Although Democrats claim to be the party of civil rights, they don’t care about civil rights. What they care about—certainly what they care about now—is changing the culture by making it illegal to recognize the distinction between men and women. When boys compete in girls’ sports, guess who wins? But it can get worse—and will if Democrats get their way.
For years, Democrats have been pushing a piece of legislation they call the “Equality Act”—which is just a gender identity act—that says an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity. Democrats think boys should have a civil right—a civil right!—to be in girls’ locker rooms and showers. They introduced such a bill in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023. They will try again. And again. And again! Is that really “civil rights”? Is that what Abraham Lincoln fought for? This nonsense is what Democrat wokies—not the American people—want. This is not “civil rights.” This is civil disaster!
Blacks in this country do have a problem, and it was created in no small part by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democrats when they began the so-called “War on Poverty” in 1967. You remember what President Reagan said about it: the Democrats waged war on poverty—and poverty won! It gave money to unwed mothers and produced a tsunami of illegitimate children. Why don’t black children do as well in school as white children? Because a larger percentage of black children live in one-parent households than white children.
Senator Pat Moynihan warned in 1965 that the single-parent family was a major cause of black poverty and dependency. He was nearly lynched by the Democrat Party for what he said.
Thomas Sowell wrote in 1960:
A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression.
In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent.
What we need to do now, after decades of failed Democrat policies, is strengthen families. The government can’t raise children; only families can. A family is a mother and a father raising their children together. That’s what Democrats killed with their endless emphasis on welfare programs and welfare payments subsidizing single-parent families. The primary job for the next Republican vice president is to spend one day every single week being photographed attending a wedding. Families matter. They are more important than any so-called “pro-family” federal program. That is a bedrock Republican priority. Here is a true fact that will be rejected by Democrats: when families are stronger, children will become better students and better citizens.
Last: economic and foreign policy.
How many Americans think Bidenomics benefits them? Politicians may say the economy is better because this or that number has changed. Americans know that whatever the statistics, whatever the politicians may say, the money Americans have doesn’t go as far as it used to—damn the statistics. Groceries cost more. Gas costs more. Who cares what weeding the garden or flying private costs?
On foreign policy, Biden has been an extraordinary failure, but the Democrats have been with him all the way. In Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the Middle East, Biden has failed.
His pull out from Afghanistan was a disaster, reminding us of the fall of Saigon. People held on to US airplanes as they took off and then fell to their deaths. What a disaster! Letting Joe Biden manage foreign policy is like giving the car keys to a drunk.
Whether you are for or against the US effort in Ukraine now, it is plain that Biden’s initial response to Russia’s invasion, like all of his subsequent responses, was too little, too late.
And in the Middle East, Biden and the Democrats have been trying to walk both sides of the street.
Biden is a failed politician, and he has been a failure for decades. But he is the darling of the ruling class in Washington. The Democrats won’t say a critical thing about him. He’s their guy. The next Democrat president will be just the same—but without the German Shepherd dog that bites Secret Service men.
Any other Democrat president will be the same as Joe Biden, because the Democrat Party has changed; it is no longer the party of your grandparents.
What does America need to do now? What’s the positive agenda? In short, trust the American people.
Free them from the shackles of government. Lower taxes. Eliminate regulations. Trust the market, remembering that the market doesn’t have to work perfectly to work better than government. We should remember that American prosperity was built by Americans, not by the army of Washington bureaucrats who produce regulations by the tens of thousands. Discard the green nonsense and stop subsidizing electric cars for rich people. And, obviously, end all the DEI nonsense: diversity, equity, and inclusion aren’t what made America great. Americans didn’t need all that woke nonsense to become prosperous and good—and the envy of the world. They don’t need it now.
It is time for another change. It’s time for Democrats to vote Republican. It’s time to let Republicans dig America out from the mess that this president—this Democrat president—and this Democrat Party have put us in.
American policy needs to return—with no apologies—to faith, country, and family. We must not let Democrat wokies scare us away from revering order, tradition, and love of the United States of America.
Help is only a few months away.
God save America.
And God bless America.
Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.
Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.
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