Sarah Huckabee (or as I can’t resist calling her, Hucky Boo Boo) Sanders misplayed her hand last night. Badly. She had an opportunity, if ever there was one, to bring some clarity and focus to the actual Republican agenda and the future of the party — granting arguendo that those things do in fact exist. Instead, she launched into a dystopian word salad, that was free of fact and full of menace.
An editorial at the Arkansas Times ate Sanders’ lunch today, in a brutal post mortem of her speech. And they’re far from being alone. Everybody from Steve Schmidt to Steve Bannon has derided Sanders’ post SOTU offering.
Perhaps people from other states who haven’t seen Sanders in action since her days with the Trump administration expected her signature surliness to have softened by now. If those people existed, they were set straight.
“She came across as mean, and she’s not mean,” CNN commentator Van Jones said afterward, offering the same perplexed defense so many others who know Sanders personally like to give.
Isn’t she mean, though? Taking a dig at the already marginalized transgender community on national television seems pretty mean to me. Sanders contrasted herself with Biden by noting that while she’s the first woman governor of Arkansas, “He’s the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob who can’t even tell you what a woman is.”
If it’s true that the culture war is an unwanted assault foisted on Republicans by the left, as Sanders claimed during that nationally televised speech, why launch this skirmish against transgender people unprovoked?
And her sweeping educational reforms are not winning over all her constituents.
This linking of Central High’s history with Sanders’ voucher scheme to funnel tax dollars to public and private schools was another brazen choice, another example of the doublespeak at which Sanders is so shameless and so skilled. The bold education reform she’ll unveil at the Arkansas Capitol this week is all but guaranteed to worsen segregation in Arkansas schools along racial and socioeconomic lines. Calling education the civil rights cause of our time even as she plans to gut public education as we know it is the kind of unapologetic liberal-tears bait that keeps Sanders’ fans coming back for more. This strategy is a proven winner around here.
Whoa. Doublespeak? Guaranteed to worsen segregation along racial and socioeconomic lines? This is strong stuff and it’s not coming from coastal elites, it’s coming from the local press.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders praises the Little Rock Nine but doesn't want public schools to teach about the history of American systemic racism that led to what the Little Rock Nine endured. Unsurprisingly.
— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) February 8, 2023
And it gets worse for Sanders. Steve Bannon and Lou Dobbs had a heart to heart chat about the response and they both hated it. I can’t find this video in embeddable form, but hit this link and scroll to the bottom. Bannon called Sanders, “not intellectually capable of this, let’s be blunt.” That is blunt, no question about it.
Bannon’s issue is that Sanders didn’t lionize Trump. This is pretty bad, when the MAGA high priest, their Cardinal Richelieu, has decided to turn on you.
The fact that this is happening is most illuminating. Bannon, Dobbs and probably most of the MAGAverse, were counting on Sanders to make a good showing, make MAGA and the GOP sound legitimate — and she completely bombed. She told war stories from the good old days, about taking to the air at Xmas, just like Santa, to visit the troops in Iraq. What in the sam hill does that have to do with the future of Republican politics? Nobody knows.
Another person who ripped Sanders’ response to shreds was Steve Schmidt, although, ironically, his central premise is the opposite of Bannon and Dobbs. Bannon and Dobbs were miffed because Sanders didn’t mention Trump by name and Schmidt is on the warpath because Sanders made the response about Trump, “making clear that Trump and the MAGA extremists control the Republican party, lock, stock and barrel.”
Here’s Schmidt’s comments on tape. I especially like the part, “Sarah Huckabee Sanders isn’t a rising generation of anything, other than a congenital liar.” Schmidt also said, “She broke her oath every single hour of every single day of her White House service.”
I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t want to be Sanders right now. She’s getting it from all sides. And she deserves it.
d
I prefer to think of her as Sarin Huckleberry (as in the female version of Huckleberry Hound) Slanders
A poisonous b***h who can’t tell the truth
I wonder if she’s going to be called upon for more duty as GOP spokesperson? After this flop, I would love to see what she does next.
And what blew my mind is that she was supplied with an advance copy of Biden’s remarks. She could have fact checked and researched whatever she needed to. And you know she had access to help with this. But that fiasco you saw was what she could cobble together.
This is the Peter Principle in action. Sanders is not who you call to do a response to SOTU. Not again.
So very true and an indictment of our racist, ignorant, hypocritical, money grubbing culture that a serial liar has served the president and is governor. And we wonder why we are on the brink of absolute disaster? She’s the answer. The Guns Over People party used her because she clearly represents them.
I think it’s verrry interesting that the local paper trashed her. She may be the governor but she’s not a beloved one, if this is any indication.
They voted for her with open eyes! I care not what she does to them.
I am interested though in what is so hard about sotu reply that invariably buries the politicians who give them. it’s as if its the first public appearance ever by these jokers. they are memorable only for their failures!
“An editorial at the Arkansas Times ate Sanders’ lunch today, in a brutal post mortem of her speech.”
You know, a far more mean-spirited individual would respond to that with something along the lines of “Well, somebody needs to eat her lunch; she looks like she could stand to skip a few lunches–and breakfasts and dinners and brunches and mid-morning snacks and mid-afternoon snacks and before-bedtime snacks.”
But, you know, I’m not mean-spirited like that.
The meanies were asking if she did the response to SOTU in her bathrobe.
Giving the opposing Party official response to a SOTU is a pretty dubious honor. You have to look hard to find someone who managed to do it with their reputation enhanced, and more often than not simply intact. Frankly, it’s the place where those with Presidential dreams go to see those dreams die! At the moment the only person I can think of who really kicked ass, who beat the proverbial Curse of the Response” was young Kennedy not that many years back. He really nailed it and even came out of it with a tag line that for a while became a rallying cry – regarding being forced to make false choices he kept outlining the either or things and asked “Why not both?” But maybe the curse got him after all. He got a HUGE case of the stupids and decided to crash and burn his career and reputation in MA politics by attempting to take out popular Ed Markey in the primary. The curse delayed maybe.
I still wonder if Sanders actually gave that speech live. It sure seemed a bit off for a live speech. Something just didn’t seem quite right. I guess there’s no rule the response has to be live but that’s how it’s always been done. And why so few manage to rise to the moment. Again, it’s often people looking at a run for President a cycle or two down the road and this is their big chance. No wonder they choke. Oh well. She bombed. Blew it. I for one am rather enjoying the hell she’s catching from all sides. She deserves every bit of scorn being heaped upon her and far worse.
You have to admit, the stars must be in a strange alignment when Steve Bannon and Steve Schmidt see eye to eye on an issue. They both think Sarah sucks. Bigly.
Reportedly, her response was recorded before the SOTU.
Were we really expecting anything else? The SOTU rebuttal has been claiming Republican scalps of every GOP idiot that does it since 2009. Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Michelle Bachman…all of them wound up killing their political career by doing this one. The defective clone of Ms. Piggy (a far more compassionate, beautiful and real person than this nepo baby) is just the latest victim of the trend.
Didn’t Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa do a response, or did I dream that?
HUCKY BOO BOO
Yep, she lived up to the name as expected. All hat and no cattle.
What’s the other one, “the emptiest barrels make the most noise?”