Republican Civil War

So Paul Ryan is giving the response to the State of the Union.

At least, he's giving the official response. But he ain't the only one.

Michele Bachmann, everybody's favorite Tea Party attack dog, is giving her own.

Which is almost comical, really.

For all their victories and supposed momentum, there's a well-documented and often-pontificated-upon divide in the Republican Party. How deep that divide goes and what it means for the party's chances is a big ole' unknown, no mater how many people claim to know it now.

Still, the fact that there are two responses to the State of the Union exposes some of the fracture lines between the two conservative factions.

On the one hand is Paul Ryan, a pragmatic policymaker -- the guy who proposed an austerity budget with real concrete suggestions even though he probably knew such a concept was foreign and laughable to his colleagues at the time.

On the other is Bachmann, who seems to be some kind of walking, breathing, kinda-sorta-thinking totem cut from the vague, zealous anger of the movement she represents.

This should be fun to watch.

How different will the tone, tenor, and (maybe, if we're lucky) actual policy suggestions the two speeches be? We dunno. But we can guess.

One has to assume Ryan will be more level-headed than Bachmann. If she doesn't spend half the speech saying "The American People rejected your agenda," or making general threats about the impending doom of the nation, we'll consider her speech reserved.

But what will Ryan do?

I'll be honest. I like Ryan. In a party that has not just accepted but openly embraced the label of "Party of No," in a party -- heck, a Congress -- that prefers ideological shortcuts and political sniping to making policy, Ryan stands out as one of the few that actually seems to propose hard solutions. In a political discourse mired in buzzwords and mudslinging, he speaks rationally.

I hope he speaks that way Tuesday night.