Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
MADDOW: We have the tape, we have the tape!
Here is where it all went wrong, apparently.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey. OK. Are you looking at me? Can you — Jillian, can you see me?
UNIDENTIFEID FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. I`m looking at the teleprompter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good evening. I speak to you tonight from Washington, D.C.
Does it look like I`m even remotely looking in the camera?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: That was the setup for the Republican response to the Republican response to the State of the Union last night. I think that is a Rand Paul staffer trying to make sure that Rand Paul giving the Tea Party Republican response to the Republican response to the State of the Union this year did not end up looking like Michele Bachmann when she gave the same address a couple of years ago while look at something that really wasn`t the camera.
It turns out the staffer did have reason to be worried. Rand Paul, as you can see, was not looking as far away from the camera as Michele Bachmann was, but he was not looking into the camera either. They did the same thing wrong again. Not only where we once again treated to not just a Republican response to the State of the Union, but also a Tea Party Republican response to the response that once again the response to the response ended up being unintentionally funny because of bad staging — which is especially amazing considering that Senator Paul`s staff was acutely aware of this as a potential problem, and we can see them on camera trying to fix it ahead of time.
And then there was the official Republican response to the State of the Union — the Republican Party`s first major chance to try to rectify with voters whatever it was that the country disliked about them enough to give President Obama a resounding reelection victory over them in November. This is the first chance post election to change the country`s mind about the Republican Party after Mitt Romney, right? This is the first chance at de-Romneyification. It is the highest profile chance they will have for that for the entire year, if you think about it.
I mean, there is no Republican convention there is no national elections. This is it for more than a year. This is their chance to re-impress the American people about what it means to be a Republican that isn`t about Mitt Romney.
How do they rectify their image with a country where the women voted for Democrats in the last election by an 11-point margin? Well, the one thing that their State of the Union response giver did to make news yesterday other than his State of the Union response was that he voted no on the Violence Against Women Act. He and 21 other Republican men in the United States Senate voted no.
Then, Marco Rubio got caught out once he started giving his speech in the easiest trap to get caught in when you have to give a response address. Just minutes after the thing that you are responding to has ended, he anticipated things that he thought President Obama would say in the State of the Union. He wrote complaints in his own speech about things he thought President Obama would say.
But then when President Obama did not actually say those things, Mr. Rubio did not adjust his speech the take out the complaints. So, Senator Rubio in his response last night ended up complaining about things said by President Obama that President Obama actually did not say in the speech that everybody had just finished watching right before Marco Rubio got to take his turn.
Mr. Rubio`s whole windup was about how President Obama had just spent his State of the Union address defending big government and demanding even bigger government. This president thinks the only solution to everything is bigger government. And that might be an effective response to a yay big government speech, but instead it seemed like a non sequitur, because this is the speech that Senator Rubio`s comments actually came after.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: It is not a bigger government we need.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Senator Rubio also complained with a sarcastic twist that the president needs to put out a Medicare plan already. Tonight would have been a good night to do that, huh, Mr. President?
The problem is the president had just put out a Medicare plan, a plan he described in the actual State of the Union address that he delivered, even if it wasn`t the one that played out in Marco Rubio`s head when he wrote his own speech, and then didn`t adjust it to reflect reality.
Mr. Rubio also made a big point about placing himself in the American middle class.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren`t millionaires. They`re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare.
They`re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They`re immigrants who came here because they were stuck in poverty in the countries where the government dominated the economy.
I want to protect my neighbors — hard-working middle class Americans who don`t need us to come up with a plan to grow the government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: I`m just a middle class guy looking out for my middle class neighborhood and my working class neighborhood where I grew up in the middle class where I live now. That bit is transformed from political scene-setting into political punch line once everybody links to the pictures from the real estate listings showing Marco Rubio is in fact selling that middle class home in that middle class Miami neighborhood.
It`s on the market for $657,000.
So, you know, you may love your neighbors, but why would you brag about that love for your neighbors in your middle class neighborhood in the highest profile speech you will ever give in your life when you`re also on record trying to move away from those neighbors in that neighborhood, so you can go live in Washington, D.C.?
The other screw-up with the Rubio speech, the Republican Party`s big effort to reset and deRomneyify themselves in the eyes of the nation is that somebody forgot to deRomneyify the speech itself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
RUBIO: Our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity. But President Obama, he believes it`s the cause of our problems.
MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I know free enterprise is on trial, and we have a president who really doesn`t believe in the rights of people to do that.
RUBIO: Of course, solar and wind energy should be a part of our energy portfolio. But God also blessed America with abundant coal, oil, and natural gas.
ROMNEY: I mean, he likes the wind and the solar, but he doesn`t like the stuff that`s under the ground, like coal and oil and natural gas.
RUBIO: Instead of wasting more taxpayer money on so-called clean energy companies like Solyndra, let`s open up more federal lands for safe and responsible exploration.
ROMNEY: They should have done more studying on Solyndra and less studying on that drilling in Marcellus Shale. I`m going to open lands for exploration.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
MADDOW: De-Romneyification failed. The Republicans` official response to Barack Obama`s State of the Union was essentially a new version of the stump speech of the guy who just lost the presidential election to Barack Obama. And the house that is the emotional centerpiece of the speech turns out is a house for sale. And the criticism of the criticism of the speech is not actually based on the president`s speech at all. And they had him vote no on the Violence Against Women Act with 21 other Republican guys right before he gave this speech.
And they ran a second Republican response again as well after they ran this one. It had the same eyeball problem as the other Republican speech had the previous time when they did it.
And then, of course, there was this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUBIO: False choices like the one the president laid out tonight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: If anybody everybody asks you to give the Republican Party`s response to the State of the Union, just say no. Seriously. I care about you. Just say no. It`s not a good gig.
