President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union Address of his presidential career — barring him deciding to take the GOP up on their longstanding conspiratorial offer to declare the Constitution null and void and install himself as Supreme Sharia Caliph — has been delivered. Anyone watching the speech must have been at least a little puzzled by the fact that when he’d say something that most carbon-based human life forms would agree with — like not being racist and judgmental — the Republicans in attendance would not stand and cheer, or even applaud.
The simplest explanation is that Obama was bringing up things that may have the support of a majority of Americans, but not Republicans, so therefore even if Obama said something like “the sky is blue in America,” conservatives would doubt it, and go outside just to make sure. But this got us to wondering what else Congressional Republicans might not feel warranted applause or a standing ovation, and here’s what we came up with.
#5. Obama Announcing He Was Resigning the Presidency
Oh sure, you’d think after 8 years of trying to make every single wannabe scandal stick to him so they could boot him out that they’d be just ecstatic if he resigned, but if he quits that’s not the same as impeachment. Republicans have had a burning desire to even the Nixonian score, and while Tricky Dick himself wasn’t impeached and removed, it’s not enough for Obama to quit; he has to be thrown out by a Republican-controlled congress so they can prove to themselves, their base, and the world that they’re not the laughing stock of humanity that they really, truly are.
#4. Obama Declares Abortion Illegal and Gay Marriage Punishable By Death
Again, don’t assume that just because he’d give them what they’ve been begging for that Republicans would suddenly start singing Obama’s praises. He’s a Democrat. Look at what’s happened with Obamacare — an idea that was born largely out of conservative think tanks. Even though the Affordable Care Act is nearly identical to the idea that the Heritage Foundation came up with and was implemented in Massachusetts under a Republican governor, they’ve tried to dismantle it from the minute it was passed and signed into law. So what makes us think that if he came out and gave them what they’ve been pining after in the culture wars that it’d be any different? It wouldn’t be; that’s the point.
#3. Free Guns for Every Man, Woman, and Child!
There are maybe a handful of things that conservative Republicans love more than guns. So why wouldn’t it get them to their feet cheering Obama if he declared that he’d be issuing at least one gun to every single American, regardless of their age, sex, gender, or political affiliation? Well, for starters, they’d carp about who was going to pay for the guns and ammo. Next, they’d ask you if members of the Black Panther Party and Muslim Americans would get guns too, and once you said “yes,” they’d be more against giving guns to everyone than they are against poor people not starving on the street, and you’d never believe your eyes when the Republicans started thinking about taking away everyone’s right to a gun so that the people they don’t want to have them don’t get them; just like they did with marriage for decades.
#2. President Obama Orders Hillary Clinton Arrested for Benghazi/Being Hillary Clinton
What if Obama got in front of the whole nation last night and said, “My fellow Americans, I must come clean. I know that Hillary Clinton abandoned our people in Benghazi that night as so many of you truly intelligent and well-bathed patriots have told me is the case, and tonight I am having her arrested for that, and for also being Hillary Clinton in general?” What do you think the response would be? If you said, “They wouldn’t trust it and they’d assume he was covering up some larger, more far-fetched conspiracy,” you’d be right and you deserve a cookie.
#1. It never was going to matter one way or the other
Seriously, that’s the whole point, isn’t it, that no matter what came out of his mouth it wasn’t going to be received well? We’ve come a long way in this country. It used to be that we fought over solutions, and now we fight over what’s a problem and what isn’t. Obama, outside of his stance on social issues such as marriage equality, has by and large been the archetypal Republican from circa 1984 or so, but don’t tell that to Republicans. They’ll never, ever see it. No matter how easy he’s been on Wall Street, no matter how much he’s let the military industrial complex write his playbook in Syria and in drone strikes, conservatives are convinced the “(D)” that comes after his name means he’s the spawn of Satan himself, and no matter how much common sense comes out of his mouth, they will never, ever accept it, much less praise it.
