There isn’t much commentary up yet, but I saw the whole thing, and it was everything that it had to be to get back control over health care reform. In fact, I thought the speech was overwhelmingly good. It was tight, well organized, superbly paced, impassioned, and convincing. And Obama stood up for the public option.
By contrast, the Republican response, given by Charles Boustany from Louisiana, was robotic. He did not substantively address any of Obama’s points. He criticized the retention of the public option for the same tired old reasons (too expensive, government takeover), without even acknowledging the President’s specific references to those points, much less addressing them. He sounded like an idiot, repeating talking points that Obama effectively rebutted without even mentioning them.
Here is the outline of Obama’s plan on the WhiteHouse.gov site.
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