Crazy
There’s one thing that’s bewildered me about Tuesday night and the State of the Union Address. But it’s about President Biden’s address. It’s – for the life of me, I can’t understand what the GOP thinking to have Sarah Huckabee Sanders give the Republican response.
For a party that’s clearly trying to start weaning itself away from Trump…why on earth would you have Trump’s former press secretary – who admitted under oath that she lied when talking to the nation – do this, looking to all viewer’s like she was just doing her old job, lying to the public???
To be clear, I can guess at their reasoning, but that doesn’t the reasoning is good or rational. What I can only assume is that they thought that since she won her governor race, she’d be a good face of the new GOP – which is not remotely different from the current GOP, unless you consider even more fascist to be “new.” And perhaps they figured that the public would appreciate seeing someone younger than President Biden (“It’s time for a new generation to lead,” she said) – except that she’s not running for president, she’s a governor, and there are plenty of governors of both parties the same age, and the person who is considered the front-running GOP candidate for president (“to lead”) is her old boss, who is 76 years old, and who most everyone is reminded of when seeing her.
When you look at Sarah Huckabee Sanders standing alone at a podium looking directly into the camera, whether you think of her as a congenital liar or are oblivious of the fact, it is next to impossible not to think of her doing that for Trump and connected at the hip. The man who the Republican Party is starting to try to disassociate itself from.
(Furthermore, that “time for a new generation” was a totally weird line, not just because the 76-year-old Trump is the GOP likely candidate at the moment, but because she was describing exactly what Democrats did do. That’s when Nancy Pelosi – and all members of the Democratic House leadership – did when they stepped aside for Hakeem Jeffries and his team of “a new generation.”)
So, of course Republicans had their “reasons” to select her for giving the party’s response. But people who run across a busy street always have their reasons to do so, which no doubt seem great to them, right up until the moment they’re flattened like a pancake. The thing is, the GOP officials who made the decision to have Sarah Huckabee Sanders given the party response are professionals, in that position in large part because of their savvy. For them to think they made a Great Choice for their “reasons,” but not take a step back and realize, “Oh, my God, what were we thinking???” is just bizarre. It was an awful decision, bordering on political malpractice.
And the dystopian job she did, to near-universal condemnation, confirms it.
Just starting with trying to rile up the public with an attack on some mystical “woke mob,” set things off on the wrong track instantly. After all, almost everyone watching her had just sat through an hour-and-a-quarter of Joe Biden. And not just “Joe Biden,” but Joe Biden telling America he wanted more pay for teachers, and a $35 cap on insulin, and to get rid of unnecessary fees like on airlines, and that he’s already started to build bridges (literally, but what a great metaphor, as well.) And Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her team didn’t have the flexibility or good sense to, oops, fix that “woke mob” line. Worse, they built on it. And created a GOP world that could only conceivably appeal to the GOP base, which is voting for them anyway.
But most inexplicable of all, perhaps, was her saying that our country was no longer divided into left and right, but instead “normal” and “crazy.” If you were ever looking for a definition of “total lack of self-awareness,” that was it.
I understand people on all sides of anything think they’re correct, and the others are wrong. But that’s different from “normal” and “crazy.” And when that is to be your standard that you want charge up the hill on --- man, you have to grasp that the base of your party actually follows the words of a literally-anonymous “Q” source. And actually believes that JFK, Jr. is literally going to come back to life and run with Donald Trump. And that Anderson Cooper eats babies. And more. Things that are quite literally the definition of crazy.
That’s today’s Republican Party.
Which, in the end, might explain why the GOP leaders chose Sarah Huckabee Sanders to present their response to the state of the Union.
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