The State of the Union response is one of the toughest jobs in politics. Many rising stars have struggled to bridge the gap between two images: the president speaking to a joint session of Congress versus a lone politician talking to the camera or a small audience. Even the most talented politicians have struggled to pretend that the two realities are in any way equally impressive.
Sanders conjured an America that more resembled a dystopian hellscape than a country that added 517,000 new jobs just last month.
It was appropriate, then, that this year’s English-language Republican response was given by Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Arkansas’ new governor has plenty of experience crafting alternate realities for a national audience. In her two years as Donald Trump’s press secretary, up was down, “countless” FBI agents hated former director and Trump foe James Comey and separating immigrant children from their families was “very biblical.” But throughout her speech on Tuesday, Sanders’s affinity for alternative facts just underlined the Republican Party’s long-term problems in appealing outside its own base.
For 15 minutes, Sanders conjured an America that more resembled a dystopian hellscape than a country that added 517,000 new jobs just last month. “Democrats want to rule us with more government control,” Sanders warned. “In the radical left’s America … you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves, and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race.”
“Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight,” said the former Fox News commentator. “Every day,” she moaned, “we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols.”
Never mind that, from transgender rights and critical race theory today all the way back through McCarthyism and…
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