I have always thought that if George W. Bush had done what Barack Obama had managed to achieve in his six plus years in office, despite the Republicans' best effort to thwart and damage him, Bush would have supplanted Ronald Reagan as his party's storied president and become the "greatest president of all time". Republicans know this, and the more they are impressed by the abilities of Barack Obama, the more they deride and vilify him.
For years now, Fox News has taken to not air the President’s statements or speeches, chiefly I think, because they are afraid to allow their viewers exposure to what their manufactured "villain" might say. Perhaps their viewers would be aware that the healthcare law has not been damaging America and that the rate of the uninsured, even before assessing the results of this year’s open enrollment, has dropped to its lowest in decades.
The Right is afraid each time Barack Obama gets on television, for they are aware of his potential to make his case to their isolated and, in many cases, deluded flock. This explains why Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, in assessing the President’s speech last night, resentfully said this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
I know it’s constitutional, but the President doesn’t have to actually deliver a speech he could actually email it out and we could read it.
Sure, when was the last time, since Harry Truman delivered the
first televised State of the Union Address, has a major political official got on television and suggested that the president distributes or post his SOTUA beyond the spotlight of the television cameras?
And for that matter, when did it become vogue, before the age of Obama, that political parties would feel the need to give multiple responses to a presidential address? The opposition has always been spooked by the ability of this President to communicate to the American people. One of the reasons why, as he noted last night, he has won two presidential elections, each time garnering at least 51 percent of the votes.
Priebus’ reasoning for not wanting Barack Obama to address the nation became clear when he was followed on Morning Joe by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, his party’s former vice presidential candidate, who seemed utterly impressed with the President’s performance last night and remarked:
I got to say, the guy is a really gifted communicator, I mean the, so what I got out of that…aside…is that the Democrats don’t have anybody in their stable who can match that….
What makes it worse for Republicans is the fact that Barack Obama is a gifted communicator, who has saved the US economy from whence they wrecked it and delivered access to healthcare to tens of millions of people…. The Republicans have been afraid of what the Democratic Party didn't seem to know during last year’s midterm elections.