Talk:Republican response to the State of the Union address

Split articles
Is there any reason why this article and its Democratic counterpart are separate articles? Deposuit (talk) 18:12, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Merge discussion
As User:Deposuit above observed a year ago, there's no good reason for the list of responses to the State of the Union address to be split by party. I suggest merging this article and Democratic response to the State of the Union address into a single one on Opposition response to the State of the Union address, arranged chronologically. Does anyone object? Robofish (talk) 21:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I've wanted to do this for a while; there is no reason at all to have two articles. Strong support. Reywas92 Talk 02:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Or we could just call it Response to the State of the Union address, since 'opposition' is somewhat misleading given that it's not a political term in the United States. But for the general idea, strong support. Dan Wang (talk) 04:57, 21 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I realize that I'm chiming in almost a year later, but I strongly support this proposal as well. Having two separate articles for this is silly, and it appears as though consensus for the merge has been achieved. I also agree with the comment made by Dan Wang; it should not be called "Opposition response to the State of the Union address," for the reason he stated. I am somewhat concerned, however, that "Response to the State of the Union address" is too vague. If Congress were to pass a bill promoted by the President in the SOTU address, couldn't that be considered a response of some sort? And if some terrorist group (foreign or domestic) was upset by something in the SOTU address and took some sort of violent action, couldn't that also be considered a response? Nevertheless, if I'm asked which of the two suggested titles I prefer, it's definitely the latter (without "Opposition"). There might be other options, though. How about "Official response to the State of the Union address?" Of course, once the naming issue is resolved, there's still another issue. Is anyone up to performing the merge? Jdaloner (talk) 08:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm against this proposal. The separation and the distinction between the two political parties is an important one, and I think the articles are fine the way they are. Fireflyfanboy — Preceding undated comment added 06:22, 14 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I also support this merge proposal. The characteristics of the response are the same - difficult speaking environment without the pageantry and audience of the presidential address; few people pay attention to what they say; and delivering the response has often not helped the careers of those giving it.  So just like there is one article to deal with the address itself, there should just be one article to deal with the response.  Wasted Time R (talk) 00:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Support. Although the distinction between the parties may be important, I am unable to tell what the distinction has to do with the Response to the State of the Union.  Having identical first paragraphs save for transposing the terms for Republican and Democrat under a merge suggestion header just looks silly.  Perhaps it is a meta-commentary on political dysfunction in American politics?  These articles are scarcely more than lists to begin with; I daresay they could be maintained as List of Republican Responses to the State of the Union and List of Democratic Responses to the State of the Union, with a single article hosting the little blurb about how it's usually brief, and Ford and Bush and Clinton were the only respondents to also be president, followed by the full list in chronological order. 68.119.44.165 (talk) 03:50, 21 January 2015 (UTC)


 * (ec with IP, already merged) I have merged the info on the Republican page to the Democratic page, and I have put in a db-move for it to be renamed Response to the State of the Union address. To address Jdaloner's concern, should there be any other sort of reponse, that would instead be called 'Reactions to' like in other articles. Reywas92 Talk 03:53, 21 January 2015 (UTC)