5:30PM: Now up -- Paul Ryan, who accuses President Obama of having been responsible for increasing domestic discretionary spending by 84% -- a charge that President Obama rejects, explaining in detail why Ryan was wrong.
5:24PM: That idiot Rove is complaining about Obama having met with the GOP, saying it was a partisan attack. Um, Karl, the House Republicans extended the invitation! And President Obama merely answered their questions. Quit your whining!
5:22PM: More proof this was a big victory for Obama: I'm keeping an eye on Bill O'Reilly's interview of Karl Rove (watching it on tape delay, I think it's already over) and they didn't even mention the Q&A until 2 minutes into their interview.
5:18PM: Matthews actually had a decent point that Pence was fighting on unfair ground -- but it was Pence who chose that ground, even though it was unfair to him. Even on taxes, which is supposed to be the GOP stronghold, Pence set Obama up to deliver these knock 'em out lines:
This notion that this was a radical package is just not true. A third of them were tax cuts, and they weren’t — when you say they were "boutique" tax cuts, Mike, 95 percent of working Americans got tax cuts, small businesses got tax cuts, large businesses got help in terms of their depreciation schedules. I mean, it was a pretty conventional list of tax cuts.
So thanks Mike Pence for letting President Obama remind people that the stimulus cut taxes on 95% of Americans. For some reason, Pence asked a follow-up about whether President Obama would support across-the-board tax cuts, which, as Obama pointed out, was sort of an absurd question.
I think is important to know — what you may consider across-the-board tax cuts could be, for example, greater tax cuts for people who are making a billion dollars. I may not agree to a tax cut for Warren Buffet. You may be calling for an across-the-board tax cut for the banking industry right now. I may not agree to that.
So I think that we’ve got to look at what specific proposals you’re putting forward, and — this is the last point I’ll make — if you’re calling for just across-the-board tax cuts, and then on the other hand saying that we’re somehow going to balance our budget, I’m going to want to take a look at your math and see how that works, because the issue of deficit and debt is another area where there has been a tendency for some inconsistent statements. How’s that? All right?
5:12PM: President Obama's answer to Pence's question on the stimulus:
You’re absolutely right that when I was sworn in the hope was that unemployment would remain around 8 [percent], or in the 8 percent range. That was just based on the estimates made by both conservative and liberal economists, because at that point not all the data had trickled in.
We had lost 650,000 jobs in December. I’m assuming you’re not faulting my policies for that. We had lost, it turns out, 700,000 jobs in January, the month I was sworn in. I’m assuming it wasn’t my administration’s policies that accounted for that. We lost another 650,000 jobs the subsequent month, before any of my policies had gone into effect. So I’m assuming that wasn’t as a consequence of our policies; that doesn’t reflect the failure of the Recovery Act. The point being that what ended up happening was that the job losses from this recession proved to be much more severe — in the first quarter of last year going into the second quarter of last year — than anybody anticipated.
So I mean, I think we can score political points on the basis of the fact that we underestimated how severe the job losses were going to be. But those job losses took place before any stimulus, whether it was the ones that you guys have proposed or the ones that we proposed, could have ever taken into effect. Now, that’s just the fact, Mike, and I don’t think anybody would dispute that. You could not find an economist who would dispute that.
5:08PM: I almost feel bad for Mike Pence watching him try to set President Obama up, knowing just how badly Pence's attempt will fail.
5:05PM: Chris Matthews is going to contextualize this for us. Danger!
5:02PM: Keith O. sets things up as one -- President Obama -- vs. 140 -- the House GOP Conference. And guess who comes out on top? Pres. Obama -- much to the admitted regret of the GOP.
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Original post:
Join us here as we liveblog the rebroadcast of President Obama's epic dismantling of House Republicans from earlier today in Baltimore, Maryland.
If you're the no-nonsense type (BORING!), you can watch an uninterrupted version of President Obama's opening remarks and the Q&A session on C-SPAN starting at 8PM Eastern. Or you can watch it now on DKTV.
If you'd like to have a bit more fun (YAY!), then watch MSNBC's special rebroadcast of the President's Question Time with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews, airing at the same time. (On MSNBC, duh.)
Whatever you choose, we'll be posting segments from the MSNBC special as soon as they are posted online, and adding our witty commentary (or just doing an endzone dance or two) in our live blog posts.
As we wait for things to get underway, check out this video of Fox News bailing out on President Obama's Q&A session with more than 20 minutes left to go.
Now if that ain't evidence that President Obama cleaned the GOP's clock...well, then I don't know what is.