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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has a perfectly good explanation for why he awkwardly reached for a water bottle during his Tuesday night response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address: It was a message from God.

Throughout Rubio's delivery of the Republican response to Obama's speech, Twitter users noted that he seemed parched. And then the social media site erupted when the Florida senator finally paused his speech to sneak a sip of water from a bottle sitting far enough off camera to make the reach seem uncomfortable.

The next morning, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos asked Rubio about the incident.

"I needed water, what am I going to do, you know?" the Tea Party Republican replied after jokingly taking a swig from another bottle. "It happens."

"God has a funny way of reminding us we're human," he added.

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Fox & Friends hosted Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council and an advisor to President Obama on economic policy, to preview the president’s State of the Union address tonight. Although Sperling told them that the focus would be on jobs and strengthening the middle class, the Curvy Couch Crew responded by obsessing over cuts to “entitlements” and carping about spending. Boosting employment? Helping the middle class? They neatly avoided the whole subject.

Sperling, when asked for a “20-second preview” said the president would hone in on “what we can do, working together, bi-partisan way, to strengthen the middle class.” He added that “a stronger middle class, better educated, working, in manufacturing, innovation, entrepreneurship, small business, these are the things that drive further economic growth.” He said that the administration has made “a lot of progress since the deep recession of 2009” but that “we have a lot further to go on job creation, on bringing down the deficit, and investing in our people.”

The only discussion about jobs was Brian Kilmeade’s comment that unemployment has just gone up in “year five” of Obama’s presidency. Apparently, he and his co-hosts thought that was all the consideration the subject deserved. He moved on to cite a Fox News poll that found 83% of respondents think government has a “spending problem.” From there, he took a swipe at Nancy Pelosi for saying otherwise and “asked” if the White House agrees.

In my opinion, Sperling should have sidestepped and highlighted what was obviously a pre-planned gotcha question that had nothing to do with the State of the Union address. But, instead, Sperling fell right into the trap of framing cuts as the Big Issue and, even worse, threw Democratic Leader Pelosi under the bus by saying the Obama administration believes “you absolutely have to bring down spending” but “in a balanced way.” He touted how much has already been cut and that there are more cuts on the table.

But, of course, that wasn’t good enough. Steve Doocy griped, “You’ve had five years, why hasn’t this administration addressed fixing entitlements with the Republicans?”

When it was Gretchen Carlson’s turn, she said, “One of the big buzzwords” in the SOTU would be “investment, which is another word for 'stimulus.'” She sneered, “Is the president really going to ask this country for more stimulus money?” She didn’t seem to care about how the previous stimulus increased employment for millions of Americans.

Sperling brought it back to jobs. “Today, we have now created twice as many jobs in this recovery as happened under President Bush in the previous recovery, even though this recovery (sic) was far deeper. …The economy has created 500,000 manufacturing jobs, we haven’t seen that in over 20 years. So you are totally right to suggest we have a lot further to go. That’s why the president has a singular focus on the economy, on middle class jobs, and making more progress.”

Oops, time up. But even as the segment was closing, Kilmeade was changing the subject. “It’s just hard to believe that we’re gonna print more money in order to pull ourselves out of it.”

The hosts could have questioned whether President Obama’s policies would accomplish any of his job-creating, middle-class-strengthening goals. But they were so busy talking about spending, they never got there. Which suggests the Republicans have no plan for the middle class and that that’s what the hosts really didn’t want to talk about.

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From this Tuesday night's PBS Newshour, apparently the network decided their viewers just weren't getting enough of David Brooks' Villager conventional wisdom with his weekly appearance on Friday night and had him on to weigh in on the State of the Union Address as well. Par for the course with Brooks, he spent the better part of his time during this interview trying to whitewash whether Americans at at time when we've got record income disparity in the United States are going to care about Mitt Romney's finances and his time at Bain Capital.

Brooks doesn't think voters are going to care because hey... they just expect everyone who runs for president to be "super-rich." Maybe he's correct that the electorate is just looking for "he most assertive manly man" when it comes to some really angry Republican primary voters, especially given who they have to choose between right now, but in the general election, that's another story.

He's also enamored with the current crop of candidates for wanting to do something "big" like turn Medicare into a voucher program. As Ruth Marcus pointed out to Brooks, their proposals might be big things but they do nothing to address the concerns of everyday Americans and would primarily benefit the wealthy.

Brooks also came just short of repeating his spiel about the Republicans being the party of the working class again here. As I noted when he repeated that nonsense on Charlie Rose's show a few weeks ago, "Sadly, The New York Times, that supposed bastion of evil liberal ideology if you watch Fox or listen to right wing radio, is still paying this man way too much money to write a column there every week."

Transcript below the fold.

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Chris Matthews was apparently completely enamored with Mitch Daniels and his response to President Obama's State of the Union Address this Tuesday night and all I can say is thank goodness Rachel Maddow was there to at least beat back at part of Matthews' fawning praise.

She didn't really have much time to respond to Matthews since they were coming up on a hard break for a commercial, but it's too bad she also did not point out that one, there was nothing honest about Daniel's speech. It was full of one lie after another. And means testing "entitlements", and I hate that word by the way, but means testing Social Security and Medicare is nothing but a way to turn them into welfare programs and to later have an excuse to eliminate them. It's a terrible idea.

And this best kind of "honest" "fiscally conservative" Republican was George W. Bush's OMB Director that helped get our economy into this mess, who has no right to be criticizing that Obama didn't fix Bush's mess quickly enough and is in the middle union busting and pushing right to work in his state and is not looking out for the working class. He's just another Republican governor doing their best to make the economy as terrible as humanly possible at the bidding of the Koch brothers and the richest among us in order to keep President Obama from being reelected. Sadly if this was Matthews' immediate response, we'll surely be hearing more of this sort of ridiculous praise of Daniels' speech from the rest of the Villagers in the beltway media.

MATTHEWS: You know, I really liked that speech by Mitch Daniels. I thought it was really a Midwestern conservatism of the best kind, honest, fiscally conservative or course, but recognizing that we have to protect our safety net and we have to recognize that the rich cannot get all the pension money and all the entitlement money. There's not enough to go around. We're going to have to have means testing. We're going to have to close the loopholes.

A very responsible kind of look at fiscal conservatism that recognizes that the rich can't plunder the poor any more, that if you're going to have a true conservatism, in other words a society that will sustain itself, a society that will be at peace with itself, you need to help the people to get a break and that means it's not Libertarianism at all. There's nothing of Ron Paul in what that man said.

It was a responsible social policy of the right, which was really I think cast in old time Midwest, Bob Taft conservatism, except for some of the bromides, the idiomatic crap that he threw in there to make everybody happy. There was a seriousness to this speech. And now I understand why people like Mitch Daniels.

MADDOW: Chris I am very glad that we area all talking about this together because I could not disagree with you more about the speech. This was just my impression of it but I don't have time to go into that...

MATTHEWS: Why?

MADDOW: We're going to go into that in a moment.

MATTHEWS: What's wrong?

MADDOW: I think that Mitch Daniels there to say the world is on fire. Be afraid. Run to Republicans. I mean, he's talking about America as a country that... America adrift, quarreling and paralyzed going over Niagra. I mean this was a “Be afraid, be afraid, be afraid” this guy's trying to murder the country speech.

MATTHEWS: But he also had solutions. He had gutsy solutions. He wasn't afraid to take on the rich and that's so rare today in the Republican side.

MADDOW: I will take you on that Chris, absolutely.

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Prior to Tuesday night's State of the Union Address from President Obama, The Young Turks Power Panel of Crooks and Liars managing editor, Tina Dupuy, United Republic's Zaid Jilani and comedian and Stephanie Miller Show regular John Fugelsang discuss what progressives would like to hear the President say during his speech.

Much agreement on running against the "do nothing" Congress we've got right now and Tina and John were right. Were Cenk to get his wish and the President would come out swinging in the manner he described here at Republicans, he'd be painted as the angry black man. The Republicans and the Villagers in the media would have a field day with him.

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House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said on Sunday that he may block an extension of the payroll tax holiday if President Barack Obama does not approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

"We're going to do everything we can to make sure that this Keystone pipeline is in fact approved," the Speaker told Fox News host Chris Wallace.

"Are you saying you may link the Keystone pipeline to extending the payroll tax holiday?" Wallace asked.

"We may," Boehner admitted. "As I say, all options are on the table."

"Why not demand that if he wants the payroll tax cut, he has to approve it?" Wallace urged. "In other words, it comes with it. You want the payroll tax cut, the pipeline goes with it."

"All options are on the table," Boehner repeated.

Wallace also noted that during his upcoming annual State of the Union speech, Obama would ask for more help for the middle class, propose that the wealth pay more taxes and suggest a "grand bargain" to cut the deficit and raise the nation's debt limit.

"It sounds to me like the same old policies that we've seen," Boehner complained. "And if that's what the president's going to talk about Tuesday night, I think it's pathetic."

Last week, the Obama administration rejected TransCanada Corp.’s plan to pipe Canadian oil sands through sensitive environmental areas to Gulf Coast refineries. The 2 percentage point payroll tax cut for 160 million workers expires in February.

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Saturday Night Live gave Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and CNN a bit of grief for her "tea party" response to the president's State of the Union Address. They could have done better by just airing Bachmann's actual speech since their parody wasn't nearly as creepy or bizarre as the real thing.

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From AmericaBlog -- Maddow: The story behind Michelle Bachmann's speech — it was a manufactured 'event' by CNN & a Republican for-profit consultant:

Stunning. It appears from Rachel Maddow's reporting that there's a larger story behind the Michelle Bachmann "Tea Party movement official response" to Obama's state of the union address. Turns out, "Tea Party" doesn't mean what you think it means; and neither does "movement."

According to Maddow, CNN has been working with Sal Russo, of the for-profit Republican consulting firm Russo Marsh & Rogers — Rachel used the words "merging" and "partnering" — in several Tea Party–related joint enterprises.

• One was the placement of "embedded" reporters on Russo's phony Tea Party Express bus tour (giving credibility to the bus tour and Fox-like publicity to CNN).
• One will be an upcoming jointly-hosted "first-of-its-kind Tea Party presidential primary debate" (giving same to same; note the Fox-ification of CNN in this).
• And one was the Michelle Bachmann–delivered "Tea Party movement official response" to Obama. Why was it "official"? Because CNN, who appear to have helped create it, said it was.

Go read the rest but as they pointed out, it will be interesting to see if there's any fallout or not from Rachel's reporting. Here's CNN's contact page if you want to express your displeasure to them. Whether they respond now that someone on another network has called them out for their behavior, who knows. Anyone think Kurtz will pick this up for his Sunday show? Or that Anderson Cooper will mention it in one of his "Keeping Them Honest" segments? We've been covering this at C&L for some time now and it hasn't stopped them from promoting the "tea party" yet.

CNN pimps Great American Tea Party Express PR and Propaganda Tour

CNN's "Fox Envy": Details Behind Their Fawning Tea Party Coverage Exposed

CNN gives 'Tea Party Express' free publicity, free room to lie about their anti-Obama origins

CNN lowers itself and will air Michelle Bachmann's Tea Party SOTU Attention speech

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Frank Rich and Rachel Maddow discussed the very dark tone coming from the Republicans' response to the State of the Union address, what their strategy is going to be for the next two years, and whether it's going to resonate with most of the voters.

MADDOW: The State of the Union is being lauded as a statement of centrism. I think that‘s fair. And I also think that President Obama‘s version of the center is turning out to be a much more Democratic place than where Bill Clinton found the center, big “D” Democratic. What do you think about that?

RICH: I agree with you. I wish I could debate it with you, but I think—he‘s always been a centrist, but a little bit to the left of the triangulated Clinton. And he held firm on that last night. And the problem of the Republicans is they‘ve moved so far to the right. You know, your Eisenhower analogy, we forget that the John Birch Society, which still exists and is supporting the Tea Party, called Eisenhower a communist dupe --

MADDOW: Right.

RICH: -- back when he was in the White House. So—

MADDOW: You know, you look at the Republican responses last night, and the thing that surprised me the most, I‘m not too much of a tone person, I tend to be the person who reads the transcripts rather than watches the tape, but the Republican responses were really dark, almost apocalyptic, I thought about, you know, America being a failure, nothing working now, nothing‘s going to work, we‘re reaching this point of no return.

Does that reflect a decision by Republicans to just sort of try to goose their base and not try to go for a broader audience? What did you make of that?

RICH: It certainly doesn‘t go for a broad audience. What‘s really odd about it is they‘ve ceded Reagan optimism to Obama.

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Bill Maher weighed in before yesterday's State of the Union address on CNN and had a few things to say about gun control after the tragic shootings in Arizona, the ridiculous "date night" seating arrangements, crying John Boehner, Michele Bachmann getting air time on CNN to respond to the SOTU and the continual move to the right by our politicians.

BLITZER: I'm told, Bill, that the president of the United States has decided, despite what happened in Tucson, he will not specifically talk about guns in his speech tonight. He's going to do that down the road in a future speech in a few weeks. But, tonight, the word gun is not going to be there. You think that's a mistake, don't you?

MAHER: Oh, I do. That's a real shame.

And it's always down the road. And it's always finding common ground with this president. And that common ground always seems to be the ground where the Republicans are already standing on. So, no, that's a real shame, because this was again an opportunity, similar to the opportunity Ronald Reagan had in 1981, when he was shot.

At a moment like that, maybe people would be willing to go along with a -- sort of a different point of view. Even Dick Cheney said that. Dick Cheney seems to be to the left of Barack Obama on the gun issue. So, I guess it's true. He has moved to the center.

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