It’s a blessing and a curse to do the SOTU response — it’s a great platform, but responders often fall flat. I thought Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders did quite well and will, henceforth, be on the list of GOP rising stars, if she wasn’t there already.
This was the most memorable line:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: "I'm the first woman to lead my state and [Biden] is the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can't even tell you what a woman is." pic.twitter.com/xc6x2Vxpgp
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 8, 2023
And this was the most important line:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: "The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy." pic.twitter.com/aGOD56WrL0
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 8, 2023
This is great framing for Republicans — provided they don’t fall on the wrong side of the line themselves.
An interesting subtext was Sanders’s calling for a new generation of leadership when her former boss is decidedly the old generation of leadership, and her choice not to say his name, even when telling a long, flattering story about him. A straw in the wind.