Stop amnesty now–but how? While his fellow Republicans in Congress have suggested everything from blocking DHS funding to trying to ground Air Force One, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggests that one of the best options might be to let President Obama keep talking.
“The more the president talks about his ideas, the more unpopular he becomes,” Boehner said Thursday, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.“Why would I want to deprive him of that opportunity?”
Boehner was responding to statements by Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R- Kan.), who, in addition to grounding Air Force One, wanted to voice his disapproval of executive amnesty by cancelling the State of the Union address.
Joel Pollak of Breibart News was the first to float the idea of cancelling the State of the Union address “so that the elected representatives of the people do not have to listen to, or applaud, a man who is violating his oath of office and governing as a tyrant.” He argued that Republicans in Congress should deign to invite Obama for the annual speech, as though the entire affair was a sort of glorified dinner party.
But Boehner has a strong case to back him up.
In October, Obama’s approval rating hit a new low, with just 40 percent of Americans approving of his job performance. While they have ticked up slightly since then, (the most recent Gallup poll shows Obama hovering at 43 percent approval, while Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll shows 46 percent), the president still is far south of the soaring approval numbers he had when first elected.
Obama has done a lot of talking since since and it seems he has struggled to significantly increase his popularity with Americans.
Trust, once lost, is hard to regain. Perhaps Obama should heed the words of Edna Mode from Pixar’s “The Incredibles”:
