Guess what? Liberals and conservatives do not see eye-to-eye on the speech President Obama gave this afternoon in which he lambasted GOP congressman Paul Ryan’s debt plan and offered a robust defense of an expansive federal government. Obama may have given some lip service to both sides working together to overcome this great national challenge, but the speech instantly proved incredibly divisive. Ryan himself called it “excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to addressing our country’s fiscal challenges.” The Republican punditry isn’t being any kinder, while meanwhile, liberals (except the ones who don’t like the idea of doing debt-reduction right now to begin with) are pretty ecstatic. Here’s a large smattering of opinions from both the left and the right on both politics and substance (or total lack of it) in today’s big address.
Ezra Klein, Washington Post:
Andrew Sullivan, Daily Beast:
Mark Halperin, Page/Time:
Paul Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal/New York Times:
Jonathan Chait, New Republic:
Jonathan Cohn, New Republic:
James Pethokoukis, Corner/National Review:
Yuval Levin, Corner/National Review:
Jonah Goldberg, National Review:
Michael Tanner, National Review:
Ed Morrisey, Hot Air:
David Frum, Frum Forum:
Jonathan Capehart, PostPartisan/Washington Post:
Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro, First Read/MSNBC:
Aaron Blake, Fix/Washington Post:
Greg Sargent, Plum Line/Washington Post:
Jennifer Rubin, Right Turn/Washington Post:
Mark Thoma, Economist’s View:
Massimo Calabresi, Swampland/Time:
Kate Pickert, Swampland/Time:
Steve Benen, Political Animal/Washington Monthly:
Hugh Hewitt, Town Hall:
Howard Kurtz, Spin Cycle/Daily Beast:
Jamelle Bouie, TAPPED/American Prospect:
David Corn, Mother Jones:
