To avoid some of the
embarrassments of past years, Republicans once again went safe, bland, and a wee bit robotic with their official response to the State of the Union. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst displayed phenomenal discipline in her Senate race, shutting up about the
many,
many crazy ideas she'd expressed earlier in her career. She brought the same discipline and a fixed smile (until the sad, frowny part of her remarks) to her
SOTU response, but not much in the way of charisma or content beyond very basic talking points.
Keystone XL was, in Ernst's words, "the Keystone jobs bill," with no mention of the fact that today, Republicans killed a Democratic amendment calling for American materials to be used in constructing the pipeline—voting against jobs, in other words.
Similarly, Ernst said "Let’s simplify America’s outdated and loophole-ridden tax code," but she didn't say who would end up paying more, who would end up paying less, and what services would end up being cut as a result. Little details like that. Ernst also promised more of the same, in the form of Obamacare repeal and anti-abortion legislation, as well as, of course, nebulous promises to fight terrorism.
A 10-minute response to an hour-long speech is never going to measure up in terms of substance, but once again, Republicans didn't even really try. They just bet that putting someone up there who doesn't look like the stereotypical Republican congressman—in this case, a woman—would do the work of making their policies seem more palatable to the public.
Of note, Ernst's speech was so larded up with personal detail about her—she's a mother, a soldier, a Hardee's biscuit maker, a construction worker, a plower of fields—that Rep. Carlos Curbelo, whose Republican Spanish-language response was just going to be a translation of Ernst's speech when it came to policy, had a chance to say something that actually comes from him in replacing Ernst's folksy personal anecdotes with some of his own.