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"  The debate that should have happened during the election happened Tuesday night. Instead of Obama pretending that he represented the whole of American thinking and the entire body of the people, the president laid down a blueprint for progressives. He called for raising the minimum wage. He called for equality for women in pay, a meaningful address of climate change, early childhood education, the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and gun control. The specifics were vague, but nonetheless, this was one of Obama&amp;#039;s Important Speeches, with a capital I and a capital S. Even five years ago, almost any of these policies would have been considered hopelessly Carter-liberal. Now there is a good chance they will happen, at least partially. This was a very clear statement that American government is about to grow much more involved in the daily life of its citizens.  But Obama was not the most interesting spectacle Tuesday night. The most interesting spectacle was the Republican party&amp;#039;s various responses to his program. They are a fractured group at the moment, but one thing that is common to them all is that they all oppose the expansion of government into any aspect of Americans&amp;#039; daily lives. But how much more different could their responses have been? We have on the one hand the glazed look of John Boehner, who seemed completely checked out. On Twitter, speculations of what he was thinking were rampant. Some suggested that he wanted a beer, others that he was playing out Top Gun in his head. We&amp;#039;ll never know, I suppose. He represents the old, sensible wing of the Republican party, completely out of touch, dreaming about a world where he could simply answer any question with the phrase &amp;quot;trickle down.&amp;quot;  Marco Rubio gave the official Republican responses, and, given that the bar has been set very low, carried himself off very well. Frankly, he was excellent. He spoke to middle-class values, and made some key acknowledgments of reality that have been sorely lacking from previous Republican addresses: Immigrants are part of the American story, for example. He even remarked that government has a role to play in maintaining society&amp;#039;s rules. He mentioned that his father had been a bartender and that he had recently repaid a hundred thousand dollars in student loans. This is a big step forward for the Republican Party: recognizing that there are some downsides to laissez-faire capitalism. Rubio also offered legitimate criticisms of entitlement spending. What he did not do was offer any meaningful solutions. It is terrible, for him and for everybody else, that a United States Senator is still paying back-student loans. His answer? More information. Most students with a hundred thousand dollars in debt know how bad they have it. And then Rand Paul: Montesquieu-spewing fanatic who does not seem to have realized that the eighteenth century ended. Is he even a Republican at this point? To me, belonging to a party on the most basic level means that you allow others to speak for you. Paul cannot submit to that.  The cliche with Obama is that he has been fortunate in his opponents. On this night, he learned that having three opponents is far, far better than having one.  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a19436/state-of-the-union-2013-republicans/>