Sen. Mike Lee will deliver the Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address next week.
The Utah lawmaker was elected in the 2010, succeeding Bob Bennett, who was ousted at the state GOP convention and was one of the first Republican incumbents to fall in the Tea Party wave that year.
Since joining the Senate in 2011, Lee has been a favorite of the movement and an obstacle to the president’s and congressional Democrats’ agenda. Most recently, he joined Ted Cruz in the failed strategy to defund the health care law, an effort that led to October’s government shutdown.
Republicans give an official response to the president’s address each year, but a separate Tea Party retort has become a recent trend; it is streamed online and sometimes carried on broadcast and cable television. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul have previously performed this role.
“For the Tea Party movement, 2014 is not just about taking back the Senate, but it is also about putting forward conservative ideas that will allow for America to prosper,” said Amy Kremer, chairwoman of the Tea Party Express. She called Lee “both a Tea Party hero for supporters across the nation, and a conservative leader in the upper chamber.”
House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell typically pick a Republican to deliver the GOP’s official response, but no one has yet been named. Last year, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio delivered the televised address, during which he famously stopped to take a sip of water.
While Republicans are preparing their own agenda to challenge the president’s, the White House is working to attract the public to the speech and to engage them during it. In a YouTube video released Tuesday, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough announced a new initiative to involve supporters, asking them to view the address via the White House website, which will offer “an enhanced” version of the speech featuring charts, graphics and data to further explain the remarks.
The address “is not just a conversation with Congress, but a conversation with you, the American people,” McDonough says in the 2½-minute video, which begins with clips from previous addresses by former presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.
Mike Lee to Give Tea Party Response to SOTU
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