Vice President Kamala Harris got plenty of exercise yesterday during President Biden’s State of the Union speech.
Whenever the well-poised and well-prepared President repeatedly made a point consistent with his agenda, she stood and clapped, displaying her vibrant smile, while Speaker McCarthy, newly elected
by his Conference after fifteen ballots, rarely applauded or stood up, doing his utmost to maintain some version of a poker face.
Knowing that the optics of the State of the Union speech are closely followed by all viewers, and especially by the pundits, McCarthy had admonished his Conference ahead of time not to disrupt
the speech.
And the result? The McCarthyites did not remain silent (https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/politics/republicans-interrupt-biden-state-of-the-union).
For example, the always rowdy Trump acolyte Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) interrupted the President nine times by calling him a liar. In doing so, she broke the record of South Carolina
Republican Congressman Joe Wilson who, in 2009, called President Obama a liar once during a speech he gave on the House floor on health care. Wilson later apologized for his intemperance
(https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/08/dems-stick-up-for-biden-after-republican-jeering-at-sotu-00081790).
Greene occupies a special place in the Republican orbit. It was Greene, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and others who prolonged McCarthy’s ascension to the Speakership by
making special demands designed to curb his powers — which is why our Chief Legislative Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, quickly noted that Greene did not apologize for
her intemperance. “McCarthy’s beholden to that strident minority,” Smith noted, “so he won’t go after them, otherwise they might try to dethrone him.”