Rep. Randy Weber (R-Tex.) is causing a bit of a stir with a series of tweets in advance of tonight's State of the Union address, including calling President Obama the "Kommandant-In-Chef" (sic) and a "Socialist dictator." 
 
 On floor of house waitin on "Kommandant-In-Chef"... the Socialistic dictator who's been feeding US a line or is it "A-Lying?" — Randy Weber (@TXRandy14) January 29, 2014 
 
 SOTU: I never said if you like your country you can keep it. He can't blame Bush anymore. Will it be his phone and pen next time he blames? — Randy Weber (@TXRandy14) January 29, 2014 
 
 SOTU = Sorry Our Time's Up. POTUS = Poor Obama Trashed U.S. We shouldn't be surprised. He promised to "fundamentally change US" Boy is he?! — Randy Weber (@TXRandy14) January 29, 2014 
 
 Weber is a freshman who serves in the seat formerly held by Ron Paul (R-Tex.). ||||| With around 50 minutes until President Barack Obama was scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address, freshman Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) took to Twitter to let everyone know that he was getting impatient, while simultaneously becoming the first GOP congressman on Tuesday to call the president a "socialistic dictator": 
 
 On floor of house waitin on "Kommandant-In-Chef"... the Socialistic dictator who's been feeding US a line or is it "A-Lying?" — Randy Weber (@TXRandy14) January 29, 2014 
 
 A spokesperson for Weber's office later confirmed that "it is our tweet." 
 
 It was a classic troll move and perhaps a rather obvious cry for attention. As the National Journal reported last year, Weber, the Texan who replaced retiring GOP Rep. Ron Paul in 2012, fancies himself the next "Republican troublemaker, if only someone would pay attention." 
 
 Weber may have been the first Republican member of Congress to attack Obama as a "dictator" on Tuesday, but it's possible he won't be the last. In 2010, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) tweeted his response to the president's State of the Union address, saying that Obama believed in "socialism," not the Constitution. 
 
 This post has been updated with comment from Weber's office. 
 
 Luke Johnson contributed reporting. 
 
 [H/T Matthew Keys] ||||| Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) delivers the GOP rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address. (The Washington Post) 
 
 Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) delivers the GOP rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address. (The Washington Post) 
 
 The official Republican rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address was delivered by Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), the House GOP’s highest-ranking woman, who asserted that Obama was making it tougher for a lot of Americans. 
 
 “Right now, the president’s policies are making people’s lives harder. Republicans have plans to close the gap,” she said. 
 
 But that was hardly the end of it as a diverse group of Republicans joined in to respond to the president’s address Tuesday night. Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.), two tea party favorites, also delivered high-profile responses, pushing back on Obama’s message with a sharp ideological edge. 
 
 Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), an ally of House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and the first Cuban American elected to Congress, delivered another widely seen response, delivering much of McMorris Rodgers’s leadership-approved speech in Spanish. 
 
 Dozens of other Republicans immediately weighed in with news releases and observations to reporters stationed in Statuary Hall at the Capitol, the traditional post-speech gathering place for politicians. 
 
 1 of 30 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × President Obama delivers his fifth State of the Union address View Photos The president focuses on ideas to improve the U.S. economy — including a new executive order to raise the minimum wage for workers employed through new federal contracts. Caption The president focuses on ideas to improve the U.S. economy — including a new executive order to raise the minimum wage for workers employed through new federal contracts. Jan. 28, 2014 A member of the U.S. Capitol Police outside the Capitol building prior to President Obama's State of the Union address. Matt McClain/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 The flurry of reactions partly reflects the ongoing battle for power within Republican ranks, where competing blocs, from congressional leaders to conservative advocacy organizations, have quarreled over the party’s platform and its playbook for divided government. 
 
 According to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, just 36 percent of Republicans have confidence in their congressional leaders to make the right decisions, with 63 percent not confident. Democrats are far more supportive of their leaders, with 56 percent expressing confidence in the Democratic leadership teams to make the right calls. 
 
 In an interview, Paul brushed off the suggestion that he was clashing with McMorris Rodgers. “I don’t consider it to be competing,” he said. “It’s just that we live in an age where you can get your opinion out there, but if you don’t videotape it and send it out, nobody listens. So we’re just trying to get more people to listen.” 
 
 For McMorris Rodgers, the low-key chairman of the House Republican Conference, the rebuttal slot was an opportunity to step into the national spotlight. The farm-raised legislator struck an inclusive tone, blending talk of her family — she has three young children, including a son with Down syndrome — with platitudes and policy pitches. 
 
 “I’d like to share a more hopeful Republican vision,” McMorris Rodgers said. 
 
 On health care, McMorris Rodgers said Republicans will continue to fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and she knocked the administration for the rocky rollout of the president’s signature law. 
 
 “We’ve all talked to too many people who have received cancellation notices they didn’t expect or who can no longer see the doctors they always have,” she said. “No, we shouldn’t go back to the way things were, but the president’s health-care law is not working.” 
 
 “Republicans believe health-care choices should be yours, not the government’s,” she added. “And that whether you’re a boy with Down syndrome or a woman with breast cancer, you can find coverage and a doctor who will treat you.” 
 
 McMorris Rodgers spoke from a quiet room inside the Capitol, where she sat on a gold couch with an American flag, triangularly folded, displayed on a shelf behind her. Her manner was relaxed, her style straightforward and scripted. 
 
 Over the past week, aides to McMorris Rodgers and other House GOP leaders have been busy promoting her, using her prominent perch as part of a counteroffensive to Democrats, who have aggressively criticized the party’s approach to women’s issues. 
 
 In recent days, McMorris Rodgers granted sit-down interviews to ABC News and CBS News and used social-media applications to share candid scenes from her preparations. “I’ve got my #SOTU remarks in one hand and 2-month-old Brynn in another,” McMorris Rodgers wrote in an Instagram post. “It really doesn’t get much better than this!” 
 
 McMorris Rodgers is the first female Republican to give the party response since 2000, when Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) spoke along with Sen. Bill Frist (Tenn.). The last solo GOP female response came in 1995 from Christine Todd Whitman, then governor of New Jersey. Whitman and Collins support abortion rights; McMorris Rodgers does not. 
 
 The official response is annually decided by GOP leaders in the House and Senate. This year, the collective wisdom of Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) settled on McMorris Rodgers, who was elected to the House GOP’s fourth- 
 
 ranking leadership position in 2012, beating out a conservative challenger. 
 
 “As a mother of three, she is able to frame the response as a focus on outcomes, not only on policy,” said David Winston, a veteran pollster who works closely with House Republicans. “But this is about more than partisanship or image; it is about defining an alternative, and that is what she is able to do for Republicans.” 
 
 McMorris Rodgers’s take, however, was not the only Republican rebuttal to the president. Three other GOP legislators gave heavily publicized responses. Lee and Paul, a pair of tea-party-aligned senators, delivered harsher critiques of the address, a sign that some Republicans want a more forceful assertion of conservative principles. 
 
 Lee, a youthful 42-year-old freshman, appeared at the National Press Club, delivering a response sponsored by the Tea Party Express, a political action committee. His speech, which was broadcast live on the group’s Web site, underscored his ascent as a rising star of activists and followed in the footsteps of Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Paul, who have delivered past tea party responses. 
 
 Lee hit chiefly on economic issues and imparted his broadsides against the Obama administration with a tinge of exasperation, expressing disappointment with the president’s positions on federal spending, regulatory policy and taxes. Calling on Republicans to articulate a “conservative reform agenda,” he said that the GOP will struggle to win a mandate unless it makes better arguments. 
 
 Sal Russo, a Tea Party Express adviser, said that Lee delivered the speech directly to a camera, with only a handful of aides as his audience. “It’s not a dinner or cocktail party,” he said. “We were looking for someone who is identified with the tea party to articulate our issues.” 
 
 Lee rose to prominence last year during the 16-day government shutdown when he worked alongside Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), urging Republican leaders to be more combative during deliberations. 
 
 Paul, who is considering a presidential run, also issued a Web rebuttal Tuesday, putting out a 10-minute pre-recorded speech on his Web site, YouTube and Facebook. Paul’s response, given from his office, echoed Lee’s barbed tone and economic focus. 
 
 A running theme for both conservative responses was the desire for a more robust Republican anti-poverty program, looking to combat Obama, who spent much of his speech addressing economic opportunity. 
 
 “Americans know in their hearts that something is wrong,” Lee said. “We are facing an inequality crisis, one to which the president has paid lip service but seems uninterested in truly confronting.” 
 
 Paul, who touted “economic freedom zones” in a December visit to Detroit, made a case for free enterprise. “The ticket to the middle class is not higher taxes on the very businesses that must create jobs,” he said. “Economic growth will come when we lower taxes for everyone.” 
 
 A Paul aide said that the senator’s words were inspired by Jack Kemp, the late New York congressman, who coordinated anti- 
 
 poverty policy during George H.W. Bush’s administration in the early 1990s. 
 
 Lee, who has delivered a series of speeches on rebranding the Republican Party over the past year, went on to highlight a smattering of conservative initiatives, including an expansion of access to higher education and an elimination of targeted tax credits for energy companies. As with McMorris Rodgers, he committed to repealing the federal health-care law. 
 
 Ros-Lehtinen, the most senior Hispanic Republican in the House, rounded out the takes, interpreting a lightly edited version of McMorris Rodgers’s speech for Spanish-language media outlets, including Telemundo and Univision. She performed a similar duty in 2011 when she translated the official response of Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.). 
 
 Ros-Lehtinen’s rendering is part of a push by party leaders to herald Spanish-speaking Republicans. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who once interned in Ros-Lehtinen’s office, delivered the official response to Obama last year, speaking in Spanish and English. ||||| Paul Ryan and his wife Janna wash pots at St. Vincent De Paul dining hall. (Associated Press) 
 
 Update: Antal, who describes himself as an independent, has voted in Democratic primaries for the past 17 years. 
 
 The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall. 
 
 Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University. 
 
 “We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.” 
 
 He added: “The photo-op they did wasn't even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.” Antal later told NBC News that Ryan had cleaned some dirty dishes; his original comment was based on secondhand information from a volunteer. 
 
 Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to the airport after his Saturday morning town hall in Youngstown. By the time he arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned. 
 
 Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty. 
 
 According to a Romney aide not authorized to speak publicly about the event, the campaign followed its usual protocol for impromptu, on-the-road stops by candidates: A staffer was dispatched to the St. Vincent De Paul Society ahead of Ryan’s visit Saturday morning and spoke with a woman in charge on site, who said that it would be fine for the congressman to stop by. The campaign did not contact Antal ahead of the visit. 
 
 The woman on site told the Romney staffer that some of the volunteers had already left, but that most were happy to remain until Ryan arrived, according to the aide. After Ryan left the soup kitchen, the woman approached a campaign staffer and expressed gratitude for Ryan’s visit, the aide said. 
 
 Chris Maloney, Ohio communications director for the Romney campaign, said that the visit by Ryan had been intended to highlight the work of the soup kitchen volunteers. 
 
 "Our campaign and Congressman Ryan were pleased to bring attention to the meaningful charitable contributions the St. Vincent De Paul Society makes to people in need,” Maloney said. 
 
 Antal, a self-described independent voter, said that he “can’t fault my volunteers” for letting the campaign in but said that the campaign “didn't go through the proper channels.” 
 
 He noted that the soup kitchen relies on funding from private individuals who might reconsider their support if it appears that the charity is favoring one political candidate over another. 
 
 “I can’t afford to lose funding from these private individuals,” he said. “If this was the Democrats, I’d have the same exact problem.” 
 
 He added that the incident had caused him "all kinds of grief" and that regardless of whether Ryan had intended to serve food to patrons or wash dishes, he would not have allowed the visit to take place. 
 
 “Had they asked for permission, it wouldn't have been granted. ... But I certainly wouldn't have let him wash clean pans, and then take a picture,” Antal said. 
 
 Aaron Blake contributed to this post. 
 
 
 
 VIDEO: GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan stopped at a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio on Saturday, where he and members of his family washed dishes for several minutes. The head of the charity has since come out saying Ryan's visit violated the organization's apolitical status, and that Ryan "just came in here to get his picture taken." 
 
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– Ahead of last night's State of the Union Address, a Republican congressman tweeted his thoughts on the president: "On floor of house waitin on 'Kommandant-In-Chef' [sic] ... the Socialistic dictator who's been feeding US a line or is it 'A-Lying?'" Texas Rep. Randy Weber's office has confirmed the authenticity of the tweet, the Huffington Post notes. The first-term congressman later added, per the Washington Post, "SOTU = Sorry Our Time's Up. POTUS = Poor Obama Trashed US. We shouldn't be surprised. He promised to 'fundamentally change US' Boy is he?!" Weber was elected in 2012, taking over Ron Paul's spot in Congress. If his name still isn't ringing a bell, the Huffington Post points to this description of him, from a July 2013 National Journal profile: "Freshman aims to be the next Republican troublemaker, if only someone would pay attention."