Sen. Marco Rubio delivers the 2013 Republican response to the State of the Union.
Republicans will continue to show off their party unity with three different responses to Tuesday evening's State of the Union address. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst will deliver the official party response, Florida Rep. Curt Clawson will deliver the tea party response, and Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo will deliver the Spanish response, though he is expected to be in line with Ernst's response.
Last year, Sen. Rand Paul also delivered his own homemade response and posted it to YouTube, but maybe Paul figures that since Clawson voted for him for speaker of the House, his views will be adequately represented.
This should be interesting. The official voice of the GOP will be "one of the most frighteningly right-wing senators in a generation," and then trying to fill out the right flank will be a guy who looks at high-ranking officials from the State Department and Commerce Department and makes the mental leap from brown skin and desi names to "they must be representatives of the Indian government." And Ernst and Clawson will be in roles that have brought their recent predecessors such glory!
In 2009, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was widely mocked for talking about "something called volcano monitoring," and more generally failed to be the savior Republicans needed. In 2011, Rep. Michele Bachmann delivered her tea party response while looking into the wrong camera. In 2013, Marco Rubio ... well, you can look at the picture above for a reminder of his desperate water-bottle grab. In fact, it seems like the best-case scenario of recent years is simply avoiding humiliation. Yet they keep having extra responses and, with them, extra opportunities for humiliation. And Ernst and Clawson are certainly promising candidates for more of the same.
10:18 AM PT: Rand Paul just couldn't resist. Of course.
Rand responding to Obama SOTU right at 10 pm on his YouTube channel and joining Megyn Kelly on Fox News.
— @jameshohmann
