Sunday shows: Before the big speech

Washington will be preparing for President Obama’s third State of the Union address this weekend and will be attempting to digest the reemergence of the healthcare reform debate marked by the repeal vote in the House on Wednesday.

Viewers will be looking for strains in the new tone of civility called for after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) as the Sunday talk shows return to hard-core policy differences.

{mosads}House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to lay the groundwork for the Republican response to the Tuesday’s State of the Union, to be delivered by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Cantor is expected to explain why the new GOP majority is prioritizing repealing healthcare and what the next steps are. The healthcare reform repeal bill is dead-on-arrival in the Senate, but Republican committee heads are hard at work coming up with an alternative.

Expect Cantor also to tout Republican plans to cut 2011 spending to 2008 levels or less. Cantor has said he views November’s election as a mandate to slash deficit spending. The GOP has orchestrated a symbolic vote on spending hours before the State of the Union to try to get Democrats on record defending higher spending.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) will appear on the show to offer the Democratic counterpoint and defend health reform, which the American public is nearly equally divided on. He is also likely to oppose the GOP Tuesday vote as a stunt since the resolution lacks hard numbers.

The topic of civility will be an undercurrent on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which features Sens. John McCain, (R-Ariz.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). McCain, in a much-hailed opinion piece, praised Obama’s speech in Tuscon, in which he called for more civil politics. Schumer last Sunday vowed to work toward that goal. The two have opposite views on gun control, healthcare repeal and the timing of spending cuts, so the discussion could become tense.

Outgoing and incoming members of Congress will provide contrasting views on ABC’s “This Week”.

The show will feature three senators who have announced they will not seek re-election: Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas). Conrad has said he will retire to focus on deficit cutting and agriculture, but also faced a tough reelection bid in an increasingly Republican state. Lieberman is also bowing out in the face of dwindling reelection prospects.

The show will also feature three Tea Party-backed Republican freshmen. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has made waves by declaring federal child labor laws unconstitutional since the laws violate states’ rights, will appear. From the House, expect Reps. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) and Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) to tout their votes to repeal “Obamacare.”

Schilling already told ABC News this week that he will forgo the health insurance package, but said it was not done in order to avoid charges of hypocrisy from liberals who have attacked opponents of the law for benefiting from a government funded plan.

”Fox News Sunday” will feature Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) discussing the road ahead in the Senate. Expect a major topic of discussion to be filibuster reform, which Durbin favors and which McConnell, who has made more use of the filibuster than any previous minority leader, opposes.

CNN’s “State of the Union” will feature former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell made headlines in September criticizing President Obama’s approach to governing during his first two years in office. Powell, who endorsed Obama despite serving in President George W. Bush’s cabinet, said that Obama had focused too much on pushing big legislation like healthcare reform and not enough on reducing unemployment.

Since the midterm shellacking, Obama economic advisers have repeated the mantra that their top goal is increasing employment, apparently in heed of Powell’s advice.

Expect Powell also to weigh in on the problem-plagued war effort in Afghanistan and to analyze how the administration handled this week’s state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao. That visit resulted in some economic concessions by the Chinese, but also featured a blunt face-off over human rights.