Even if you missed President Obama’s inaugural address yesterday, you know it had to be good, effective and frightening to Republicans judging from Fox News reactions. This morning, Fox’s Peter Johnson, Jr. and Steve Doocy tried to spin it by
January 22, 2013

Even if you missed President Obama’s inaugural address yesterday, you know it had to be good, effective and frightening to Republicans judging from Fox News reactions. This morning, Fox’s Peter Johnson, Jr. and Steve Doocy tried to spin it by predicting that Obama's “hard-left manifesto” was so off base, it would lead to Democrats getting a "shellacking" in 2014.

Johnson, reportedly a Roger Ailes mouthpiece, concern trolled as a Democrat:

What we heard was a hard-left manifesto… It was not so much about populism as it was about pandering. And it was a very bizarre, disordered priority of what our national interests were. Where was the debt? Where was the deficit? Where was the unemployment? Where was the issue of poverty in America, which has increased under his watch? Where is the hopelessness? Where is the fear that so many Americans have that they’re gonna lose their house? Where are the solutions for those problems?

…Instead we got this catalogue of false premises, phantom arguments, in terms of civil rights, in terms of global warming, in terms of long lines at the polls? So if I’m voting for the president in this past election, and I’m a moderate Democrat and a centrist Democrat, as I am, and I hear this yesterday, I say, "Is this president in touch with the realities of America or is this more about saying, ‘My hand is on the President Lincoln and Martin Luther King’s bible. This stack of bibles I will make my statement about what I believe and look out on this millions of people, this throng and remember this forever.’" It’s not about remembering this forever, it’s about what we’re gonna do to make our country safe over the next four years... It was disconcerting to say the least.

Doocy played the role of GOP consoler:

I mean, he was very clear he was gonna push his very left agenda. But you know what? There are some on the right, Peter, who say that this could backfire on him because if you remember in 2009, he took office, he’s a Democrat. He had the White House, they had the Senate and the House as well. They pushed through the stimulus, they pushed through health care using the nuclear option and what happened in the midterms? The Democrats got shellacked!

Doocy sounded delighted as he said that last sentence.

Johnson continued playing the concern troll - who arrived at the same GOP-friendly prediction:

I believe that this sets up the president - unfortunately for our country – for a backlash. When people examine what he said and how he said it yesterday, they say, ‘Is this the country that we want going forward? Has he captured the Democratic party in a way that’s bad for our national interest? Or has he been captured by the leftist elements of the Democratic party in a way that’s bad for our national interests?’ This sets up a whole backlash that I don’t think we understand at this point.

Johnson concluded by saying, “We wish him well, obviously, he’s our president.”

Yeah, obviously.

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