Obama’s vow to wield the executive pen whenever and wherever he thinks he must amounts to a frontal challenge to the GOP to cease its relentless, dogged, and destructive campaign of dither, delay, denial, and obstructionism to anything that has the White House stamp on it. The GOP knows this but that won’t stop it from eagerly spinning its politically self-serving line of Obama the dictator. 

The GOP’s response to President Obama's first post re-election State of the Union Address in some ways will be markedly different than in its response to his prior addresses. But in one way it will be the same. Its blatant frontal assault on him didn’t work for four years. So this time the GOP’s rebuttal will be softer and gentler in tone and theme. But underneath the flowery rhetoric, the GOP’s relentless attack on his policies is still very much in place.