Kyl to Obama: Stop Whining
Asked what he thought about President Obama's State of the Union speech Wednesday night Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) told NPR earlier today that the text was too partisan and a stylistic bust.
"Well, you know, it's customary to say, well, the rhetoric was good, but maybe he needed more substance. That's the usual assessment of State of the Union speeches. I found this one to be A, too long, B, too political, and if he had an intention to reach out to Republicans, I can tell you it did not achieve the objective, nor did I think it was as much an assessment of the state of the nation or union as it was a political tirade."
Special Report: Obama's 2010 State of the Union
But Kyl - who likely shared Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's opinion of the president's speech - was just getting warmed up. Asked what he meant by political, he said:
"First of all, I would've thought by now he would've stopped blaming the Bush administration for the mess that he inherited. And I don't think that the American people want a whiner who says, woe is me. It was a terrible situation. And more than a year after he's sworn in, he's still complaining about the Bush administration."
Kyl's post-mortem followed the official script. In a blog post on its Web site, the Republican National Committee roundly dismissed the Obama speech as "another case of 'Do as I say, not as I do."
So much for a political cease-fire in Washington.