Bill Kristol: Mike Lee's Tea Party Response Speech More 'Substantive' Than Obama's State of the Union

During the February 2nd airing of This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Bill Kristol said Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) Tea Party response “[was] more substantive” than President Obama’s State of the Union speech (SOTU).

Kristol said Obama’s SOTU was “a strikingly uninspiring speech, sort of a litany of small, liberal ideas, without any overarching narrative or theme.”

Donna Brazile responded:

[With Republicans] having nothing else to talk about, because there are no new ideas coming from the Republican Party, they downgrade modernizing schools, rebuilding our manufacturing sector, giving the American people a raise. They call it little, small, liberal ideas when most Americans just want to see Washington get something done. I think the President hit all the right bases [in his SOTU speech]… [and gave] benchmarks to what he can accomplish without Congress, and I think that’s the most important thing.

As Brazile finished, Kristol rebutted that Senator Mike Lee’s Tea Party response was “more substantive, [had] more reform ideas, and [was] more candid in discussing inequality. [Lee] said we have an inequality crisis, we have a mobility crisis, [and] here are conservative reform ideas [to address these].”

Kristol summed it up thus: “Mike Lee had more ideas in his Tea Party response speech than Barack Obama had.”

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.