SOTU a Repug Circle-Jerk

First, Think Progress has six facts you must know before watching.

But while you're watching, keep this in mind, from David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

All joking aside, the fact that Rand Paul is even getting to make a second rebuttal to the State of the Union is indicative not only of the obvious and growing rupture in the Republican Party between those who want to dodge the demographic iceberg and those who would to go down with the ship. It's also indicative of the degree to which Washington is wired for Republican control.

If there were any justice, the President's State of the Union would be rebutted not only by a couple of arch-right Republicans, but by an actual progressive Democrat. A balanced set of responses would include one by Bernie Sanders, or at least one by a Senator willing to read Jacob Hacker's excellent take on employment and the state of the economy.

As it is, we're getting a State of the Union Speech by a deficit-obsessed centrist, rebutted by an arch-right Goldwater conservative, who is himself outdone by an Objectivist nut. And this is supposed to represent the complement of American viewpoints.

--