Alan Keyes, a former UN ambassador and three-time GOP presidential candidate, says President Barack Obama's State of the Union Speech was dishonest and smacked of "dictatorial arrogance."
"It's rare that we have had to endure from a president so many lies and misrepresentations, combined with such other contempt for the express and voted will of the people, as we saw last night," Keyes said Wednesday on "the Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"We have crossed the line as far as a lot of these folks are concerned in the Obama faction, the Democrat Party [and] a lot of the leftist Republicans who pretend to be otherwise.
"They are all believing that our republic is dead and their business now is to govern. It's not to represent, it's not to respond to the will of the people. It's just to do what they please with the power of government and that's ceding Obama's dictatorial arrogance."
And Keyes believes Obama is counting on an unwillingness by GOP lawmakers to defy him.
"The sentiment was clear in the polls and at the polls and yet, he's able to be arrogant like this because he knows that in this respect he has that leadership in his backpocket. They're not going to challenge it," he said.
Keyes also said Obama intentionally did not mention Christians and their ongoing persecution around the world during his address.
"That's because it's quite evident the agenda for Christians now in this country, as it is in many parts of the Islamic world, is persecution through the courts and the de-legitimization of even the expression of views," he said.
"In the very same speech he dares to tout the reduction in abortions … when he is the premier champion of the so-called right of abortion … How can you speak as if abortion is a bad thing and you're glad it's reduced and then tell me you have to defend this right to do something that apparently you admit is wrong?
"I think of [it] as gangster government. Gangsters are people who actually get self-righteous about their right to do wrong so if you interfere with their criminal behavior. You have to be severely punished. And that's what we're seeing in this society."