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Morning Glory: The Democrats Try Outrage Theater
Is that how you want your children to act in public?
Recall your days of school assemblies. All classes dutifully assembled on the bleachers, and for what?
Some pretty awful speeches, awards, skits, earnest appeals to not drive drunk and more. Rallies before big games could be fun, and decorum then went out the window—but not totally. There may have been some discipline issues at all of them. Catholic high schools like my own had standards that were at least as demanding when it came to in-school behavior as our public school counterparts.
My kids had the same general ground rules when a parent or parents were obliged to attend one of their schools’ gatherings. (The only "mandatory" such occasion was for sessions covering the rules governing high school athletics in California, which were neither boring nor exciting. They were the rules. If your kids played a sport, one or both parents had to attend and sign a form signifying that they did. The would-be student athletes were obliged to do so as well.)
Every memory of every assembly concerning the grades 9-12 is faded, but it is a certainty that all of them were more decorous than Tuesday night’s address by President Trump to the Joint Session of Congress.
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There have been low points at such gathering before, such as Speaker Pelosi’s tearing-up of President Trump’s February 2020 State of the Union address. But nothing like Tuesday night.
Of course Democrats cannot adjust to President Trump. He has broken them, just as he has broken so many former Republicans and many in the commentariat. They cannot react to him in anything approaching a normal way. Their internal emotional thermostats are shattered and there's no evidence—none—that those so impacted will be seeking the help they need much less obtaining an effective intervention.
REPUBLICAN, INDEPENDENT VOTERS LOVED PUSHBACK AFTER AL GREEN DISRUPTED TRUMP SPEECH
Disagreeing with the president is routine for half the chambers. Stunts such as arriving early to claim a chair in order to gather an annual grip and grin are somewhat amusing, even quaint.
But not Tuesday night. The walkouts. The paddles. Texas Representative Al Green yelling at Trump that "You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!" The Dean of Students removed Green but no doubt some of his colleagues gave him attaboys.
Perhaps these were auditions for guest slots of MSNBC’s rapidly evolving line-up of resistance shows. Perhaps there is some gratification for a general mention in a late-night comedy monologue that no longer commands even a traditional late night audience which was small to begin with. More than anything else, though, Congressional Democrats don’t know what to do and don’t have "leaders" who they respect and thus from whom they take cues.
They are, in a word, lost. Like the lost boys of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play, Peter Pan, Congressional Democrats don’t want to grow up if only for an annual occasion of
state.
I used to think the GOP would lose its House majority in 2026 given the tide charts of Congressional elections over the decades. But now? Who knows? Do you want the "disrupters" of Tuesday night running the federal government? Do you want them in charge or, say, the education of your children?
Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
