While The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday at 11 PM ET, it is taped in the afternoon. Therefore, Wednesday night’s episode was the first chance that Jon Stewart got to fully discuss the State of the Union address. While the first segment was pretty standard, with Stewart throwing some jabs at the President for going long with the speech and perhaps being a little vague on solutions of some things, it was the second segment where Stewart really hit it out of the park.
Stewart turned it up to eleven with his righteous indignation and it was glorious. Essentially, he took Republicans to task for pretending like they really want to work with the President and create real, working bipartisan relationship with him and Democrats. As Stewart so accurately pointed out, the GOP has worked since day one of Obama’s presidency to make sure that Barack Obama would get nothing passed with bipartisan support because he ran on that promise in 2008. Therefore, they have made sure to, by design, be against every single thing that he has supported.
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On Wednesday night, Stewart’s bullsh*t detector was working marvelously. He highlighted the false, sanctimonious face Republicans give the media time and time again, acting as if they really just want to work with the President and that he is just being too mean and hurting their feelings. All the while, they go to Twitter and call him a dictator and a lawless king who deserves to be impeached. In front of cameras, they’ll pretend like they really care about coming up with honest, real solutions. However, when they think the cameras aren’t on anymore, they’ll threaten to kill you if you cross them.
To this end, Stewart seemed to be extremely understanding towards the President. Why would Obama continue to try to work with Congressional Republicans anymore? He is nearly halfway through his second term in office. All they have done is block him at every single turn. Yet, they now are going to act surprised and hurt that the President is going to find any and all opportunities where he can get things done via executive order at this point? Really? Did they honestly think that the President was going to go through another entire term and just take their continued obstruction lying down?
Yes, the President wanted to bring a new era of bipartisanship to Washington, D.C. Republicans, when they heard that, knew what they needed to do. Refuse to work with the man at all. Period. End of story. This would be their way of making Obama a one-term President. In the end, it didn’t work as he was easily reelected. However, they have continued to play the same game. Sadly for them, the President has now decided to give up on his dream of a bipartisan, united Washington. Or, as Stewart so accurately paraphrased the President’s remarks to Republicans during the State of the Union, “F*ck all y’all.”
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
