On the day after came the grumbling.
The White House warned for days ahead of President Bush’s State of the Union address that changed conditions demanded a speech stripped of the usual laundry list of proposals designed to please loyal constituencies. But disappointment abounded Wednesday.
RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES
Issues such as preventing stem-cell research were benched in favor of immigration.
Religious conservatives heard no mention of banning same-sex marriage, preventing expanded embryonic stem-cell research or pursuing tougher abortion laws.
When the president urged the now Democratic-controlled Congress to vote on his judicial nominees, he left out his usual statement that he picks those who “strictly interpret the Constitution” – a rhetorical signal he is committed to nominees conservatives would like.
Such issues were benched in favor of a focus on a nemesis issue for the right, immigration changes that could create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
VETERANS
No focus on the importance of federal benefits for those who serve in Iraq.
The president spent a fourth of his speech defending the Iraq war and, particularly, his decision to send in 21,500 more troops. But some veterans said Bush’s argument missed the military boat by failing to highlight the importance of federal benefits for the men and women fighting the war.
“If we’re asking men and women to sacrifice and serve, then we have a responsibility to take care of them when they get home,” said Garett Reppenhagen, an Army specialist who served as a sniper in Iraq and met Wednesday with House Democrats. “If we’re not going to address that issue in the State of the Union, when and where is that appropriate to address?”
SUPPLY-SIDERS
Ideas for expanding health-care coverage may result in taypayers sending more money to Uncle Sam.
Supply-siders got no explicit repeat of the president’s wish for permanent extensions of all his tax cuts or a massive simplification of the unwieldy tax code. In fact, Bush’s ideas for expanding health-care coverage involve complicated adjustments to tax rules that could result in many people sending a bigger bite of their paycheck to Uncle Sam.
NEOCONSERVATIVES
“Freedom” rings just three times in the speech as Bush emphasizes diplomacy.
Neoconservatives saw no tough talk on Iran or North Korea, with Bush emphasizing diplomacy over threats toward the nuclear programs of countries a previous State of the Union placed in the “axis of evil.” Even Bush’s use of the word “freedom” – a mainstay in foreign-policy speeches of the recent past – fell to three from 17 the year before.
DEFICIT HAWKS
No specifics on curtailing the massive debt expected from Medicare and Medicaid.
Deficit hawks scored Bush’s plea for lawmakers to “take on the challenge” of the looming problem that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid eventually will pose for federal deficits. But no specifics followed, and it was nothing like the president’s 2005 address, when he talked about “retirement” 12 times on the way to proposing that the program offer private savings accounts to younger workers.
HURRICANE SURVIVORS
Victims of Katrina left out while Bush puts focus on Sudan genocide.
Hurricane Katrina victims still struggling to recover from the storm that struck 17 months ago heard not a word on their plight – though the victims of Sudan’s genocide in the Darfur region won Bush’s pledge to “awaken the conscience of the world.”
“I guess the pains of the hurricane are yesterday’s news in Washington,” an angry Louisiana governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, said in a New Orleans news conference.
DEMOCRATS
They hoped for serious words on global warming but got little more than an afterthought.
Cryptic hints out of the White House in the days leading up to the speech signaled Bush would be bold on energy and seek ways to curry Democrats’ favor. This led to raised Democratic hopes that the president might propose mandatory emissions caps or some other step environmentalists would cheer as a serious attempt to tackle global warming.
But Democrats were disheartened on the day after, too, saying Bush brought up “the serious challenge of global climate change” almost parenthetically.
