The Republican response to the State of the Union address, sometimes referred to simply as the Republican response, is a rebuttal speech, often brief, delivered by a representative (or representatives) of the Republican Party

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 following a presidential State of the Union address

State of the Union Address

The State of the Union is an annual address presented by the President of the United States to the United States Congress. The address not only reports on the condition of the nation but also allows the president to outline his legislative agenda and his national priorities.The practice arises...

 when the president is a Democrat

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

. When the president is a Republican, a similar rebuttal is referred to as the Democratic response

Democratic response to the State of the Union address

The Democratic response to the State of the Union address, sometimes referred to simply as the Democratic response, is a rebuttal speech, often brief, delivered by a representative of the Democratic Party following a presidential State of the Union address when the president is a Republican...

.

The most recent Republican response occurred following President Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's State of the Union address on January 25, 2011

2011 State of the Union Address

The 2011 State of the Union Address was a speech given by President Barack Obama at 9 p.m. EST on January 25, 2011, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives...

. It was delivered by Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

 Congressman Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan (politician)

Paul Davis Ryan is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party and has been ranked among the party's most influential voices on economic policy....

 from the room of the House Budget Committee, which Ryan chairs. Additionally, Obama's 2011 message was also responded to by Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann

Michele Marie Bachmann is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing , a post she has held since 2007. The district includes several of the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, such as Woodbury, and Blaine as well as Stillwater and St. Cloud.She is currently a...

, who offered web-broadcast response on behalf of the Tea Party movement

Tea Party movement

The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...

.

List of Republican responses

Date	President	Response given by
January 12, 1966	Lyndon Johnson	U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen Everett Dirksen Everett McKinley Dirksen was an American politician of the Republican Party. He represented Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate...  (Illinois Illinois Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,... ) and U.S. Representative Gerald Ford Gerald Ford Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...  (Michigan Michigan Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake".... ) 1
January 10, 1967	Lyndon Johnson	U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen (Illinois) and U.S. Representative Gerald Ford (Michigan)
January 17, 1968	Lyndon Johnson	U.S. Senators Thomas Kuchel Thomas Kuchel Thomas Henry Kuchel was a moderate Republican U.S. Senator from California. From 1959 to 1969 he was the minority whip in the Senate, where he was the co-manager on the floor for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.-Biography:Kuchel was born in Anaheim in Orange County,...  (California California California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area... ), Charles Percy Charles H. Percy Charles Harting "Chuck" Percy was president of the Bell & Howell Corporation from 1949 to 1964. He was elected United States Senator from Illinois in 1966, re-elected through his term ending in 1985; he concentrated on business and foreign relations...  (Illinois), Howard Baker Howard Baker Howard Henry Baker, Jr. is a former Senate Majority Leader, Republican U.S. Senator from Tennessee, White House Chief of Staff, and a former United States Ambassador to Japan.Known in Washington, D.C...  (Tennessee Tennessee Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area... ), Hugh Scott Hugh Scott Hugh Doggett Scott, Jr. was a politician from Pennsylvania who served in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, and who also served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.- Early life :He was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on November 11, 1900...  (Pennsylvania Pennsylvania The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to... ), John Tower John Tower John Goodwin Tower was the first Republican United States senator from Texas since Reconstruction. He served from 1961 until his retirement in January 1985, after which time he was the chairman of the Reagan-appointed Tower Commission that investigated the Iran-Contra Affair. He was George H. W...  (Texas Texas Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in... ), Peter Dominick (Colorado Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains... ), Robert P. Griffin Robert P. Griffin Robert Paul Griffin was a U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator from the state of Michigan and Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court....  (Michigan), and George Murphy George Murphy George Lloyd Murphy was an American dancer, actor, and politician.-Life and career:He was born in New Haven, Connecticut of Irish Catholic extraction, the son of Michael Charles "Mike" Murphy, athletic trainer and coach, and Nora Long. He was educated at Peddie School, Trinity-Pawling School, and...  (California); U.S. Representatives William Steiger William A. Steiger William Albert "Bill" Steiger was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1967 until his death in 1978. He served as a Republican from Wisconsin.-Early life:Steiger was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin...  (Wisconsin Wisconsin Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is... ), Gerald Ford (Michigan), Richard Poff (Virginia Virginia The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there... ), George Bush (Texas), Robert Mathias (California), Charlotte Reid (Illinois), Albert Quie (Minnesota Minnesota Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state... ), and Melvin Laird (Wisconsin)
January 19, 1978	Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...	U.S. Senator Howard Baker Jr. (Tennessee) and U.S. Representative John Rhodes John Jacob Rhodes John Jacob Rhodes, Jr. was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, Rhodes was elected as a U.S. Representative from the state of Arizona. He was preceded in office by Democrat John Murdock, and succeeded by fellow Republican John McCain...  (Arizona Arizona Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix... )
January 23, 1979	Jimmy Carter	U.S. Senator Howard Baker Jr. (Tennessee) and U.S. Representative John Rhodes (Arizona)
January 23, 1980	Jimmy Carter	U.S. Senator Ted Stevens Ted Stevens Theodore Fulton "Ted" Stevens, Sr. was a United States Senator from Alaska, serving from December 24, 1968, until January 3, 2009, and thus the longest-serving Republican senator in history...  (Alaska Alaska Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait... ) and U.S. Representative John Rhodes (Arizona)
January 25, 1994 1994 State of the Union Address The 1994 State of the Union address was given by President Bill Clinton to a joint session of the 103rd United States Congress on January 25, 1994...	Bill Clinton Bill Clinton William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...	U.S. Senator Robert Dole (Kansas Kansas Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south... )
January 24, 1995 1995 State of the Union Address The 1995 State of the Union address was given by President Bill Clinton to a joint session of the 104th United States Congress on January 24, 1995. This was the first speech delivered to a Republican-controlled Congress since 1954. This was also the first time a Republican Speaker sat in the chair...	Bill Clinton	New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...  Governor Christine Todd Whitman Christine Todd Whitman Christine Todd "Christie" Whitman is an American Republican politician and author who served as the 50th Governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, and was the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the administration of President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003. She was New...
January 23, 1996 1996 State of the Union Address The 1996 State of the Union address was given by President Bill Clinton to a joint session of the 104th United States Congress on January 23, 1996...	Bill Clinton	U.S. Senator Robert Dole (Kansas)
February 4, 1997 1997 State of the Union Address The 1997 State of the Union address was given by President Bill Clinton to a joint session of the 105th United States Congress on February 4, 1997...	Bill Clinton	U.S. Representative J.C. Watts J.C. Watts Julius Caesar "J. C." Watts, Jr. is an American politician from Oklahoma who was a college football quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners and professionally in the Canadian Football League. Watts served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 as a Republican, representing the 4th...  (Oklahoma Oklahoma Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state... )
January 27, 1998 1998 State of the Union Address The 1998 State of the Union address was given by President Bill Clinton to a joint session of the 105th United States Congress on January 27, 1998. The speech was the second State of the Union address of President Clinton's second term....	Bill Clinton	U.S. Senator Trent Lott Trent Lott Chester Trent Lott, Sr. , is a former United States Senator from Mississippi and has served in numerous leadership positions in the House of Representatives and the Senate....  (Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi... )
January 19, 1999 1999 State of the Union Address The 1999 State of the Union address was given by President Bill Clinton to a joint session of the 106th United States Congress on January 19, 1999. The speech was the third State of the Union address of President Clinton's second term...	Bill Clinton	U.S. Representatives Jennifer Dunn Jennifer Dunn Jennifer Blackburn Dunn was a prominent Republican member of the United States House of Representatives 1993–2005, representing .-Early life:...  (Washington) and Steven Largent Steve Largent Steven Michael "Steve" Largent is a retired American football player, enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and a former U.S. Congressman, having served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Oklahoma from 1994 until 2002...  (Oklahoma)
January 27, 2000 2000 State of the Union Address The 2000 State of the Union address was given by U.S. President Bill Clinton to a joint session of the United States Congress on Thursday, January 27, 2000.Clinton began the speech by saying, "We are fortunate to be alive at this moment in history...	Bill Clinton	U.S. Senators Susan Collins Susan Collins Susan Margaret Collins is the junior United States Senator from Maine and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the Senate in 1996, she is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs...  (Maine Maine Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost... ) and William Frist (Tennessee)
January 27, 2010 2010 State of the Union Address The 2010 State of the Union Address was given by United States President Barack Obama on January 27, 2010, to a joint session of Congress. It was aired on all the major networks starting at 9 p.m. ET...	Barack Obama Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...	Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell Bob McDonnell Robert Francis "Bob" McDonnell is an American politician who has been the 71st Governor of Virginia since January 2010. A former lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, McDonnell served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1993 to 2006 and served as Attorney General of Virginia from 2006...
January 25, 2011 2011 State of the Union Address The 2011 State of the Union Address was a speech given by President Barack Obama at 9 p.m. EST on January 25, 2011, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives...	Barack Obama	U.S. Representative Paul Ryan Paul Ryan (politician) Paul Davis Ryan is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party and has been ranked among the party's most influential voices on economic policy....  (Wisconsin)

¹ First organized, televised response to a presidential State of the Union message

Non-State of the Union responses

In addition to Republican responses to official State of the Union addresses, there have been two Republican responses to non-State of the Union speeches which were delivered soon after the inaugurations of Presidents Clinton and Obama.

Date	President	Address type	Response given by
February 17, 1993	Bill Clinton	First address to joint session of Congress	U.S. Representative Bob Michel (Illinois)
February 24, 2009	Barack Obama	First address to joint session of Congress	Louisiana Louisiana Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...  Governor Bobby Jindal Bobby Jindal Piyush "Bobby" Jindal is the 55th and current Governor of Louisiana and formerly a member of the United States House of Representatives. He is a member of the Republican Party....

See also

• Democratic response to the State of the Union address
  Democratic response to the State of the Union address
  The Democratic response to the State of the Union address, sometimes referred to simply as the Democratic response, is a rebuttal speech, often brief, delivered by a representative of the Democratic Party following a presidential State of the Union address when the president is a Republican...
  
  
• State of the Union address
  State of the Union Address
  The State of the Union is an annual address presented by the President of the United States to the United States Congress. The address not only reports on the condition of the nation but also allows the president to outline his legislative agenda and his national priorities.The practice arises...
  
  

External links

• Transcript of Paul Ryan's 2011 Republican response