State of the Union critiques Trump — surprisingly, the GOP has similar thoughts too.

It’s unusual for a president to use the State of the Union speech to critique a leading candidate of the other party who is seeking to be his successor. It’s positively stunning, however, that the other party’s official response would take aim at the same target.

“Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention,” President Obama said Tuesday in his address.

“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation,” South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said in the GOP’s official response to the president’s speech.

“We need to reject any politics — any politics — that targets people because of race or religion,” the president said.

“No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country,” Haley said.

There is no mystery, of course, about the identity of the person that Obama and Haley were referring to in their rebukes of the politics of exclusion. If anyone doubts Donald Trump’s status as an utter outsider, or that the Republican Party is rattled by his high standing in the polls, the latest evidence is in the convergence of Tuesday’s speeches.

GOP leaders are obviously worried that their opportunity could be slipping away. It has been difficult historically for either party to hold onto the White House for three consecutive terms, let alone when the lame-duck president is viewed as negatively as Obama is and his presumptive heir faces her own challenges in terms of public confidence and charisma.

And yet a Trump candidacy could usher in a Republican rout.

Not that Trump supporters are likely to be swayed by any advice from a Republican governor, let alone the latest sermonizing from a president with the habit of describing almost everything he favors as “the right thing to do.” For them, authenticity requires the sort of total unfamiliarity with issues, real governance and tact that their hero has exhibited on the campaign trail.

“Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference,” Haley said. “That is just not true.”

In less than three weeks, Iowa voters will become the first to test that proposition.