SOTU and the GOP

Amy is out of town and I'm left fending for myself. That meant that tonight I had steak nachos for dinner, and I watched a man movie: Walking Tall. You can't tell me that Dwayne The Rock Johnson isn't the best action star in Hollywood right now, although I think Daniel Craig is pretty darn close.

Anyway, just thought I'd comment on a few things:

• Didn't really catch the State of the Union, but we happened to tune in in time for the GOP response to the SOTU given by Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana. I was thoroughly impressed. It was such a concise and direct response to Obama's weak oratory. The only part that I really caught of the SOTU was when Obama was talking about investing in green energy and it just made me so mad to hear him talk down to American citizens as if Solyndra and all of the other failed green companies that were loaned enormous amounts of money didn't already fail, and that we have an opportunity to get ourselves on the way to energy independence and he won't sign off on the Keystone Pipeline. For this reason, I loved Mitch Daniels' response:

  The President's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it...
  
  As Republicans our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life's ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.
  
  In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.
  
  So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality. The challenges aren't matters of ideology, or party preference; the problems are simply mathematical, and the answers are purely practical.
  
  An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.
  
  The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.
  
  Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say 'First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.'
  
  "The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.
  
  "That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates. A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.

• Not sure if Romney has actually been performing better in the debates, or if the tide is just turning against Gingrich, but Romney is coming back in the polls that matter: Florida. Polls through the 23rd had Gingrich pulling ahead of Romney, all the ones following the South Carolina results, but since then Romney has rebuilt his lead. Florida will go a long way in determining how long the not-Romney-moment lasts for Newt Gingrich. I just hope that he's learning that he needs to be a little more impassioned and human instead of so deliberate and prosaic. He needs to connect with voters and he has a hard time doing that outside of his regular supporters.

 That's all I got for that, as of right now.