After watching President Biden's surprisingly effective State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' official Republican response — with its strident partisan tone and dark culture-war rhetoric — struck many viewers as a jarring contrast. But the reviews are in from the narrow (yet disproportionately vocal) slice of America's far right that was Sanders' intended audience: Her bizarre, intense and dystopian speech is a smash hit.
Strewing her laurels across columns, airwaves and social media, Sanders' supporters among evangelicals and the GOP's conspiracy-theory caucus are hailing the Arkansan's dog-whistle opera as the masterwork of a political rising star.
"A Star Is Born could be the title of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders absolutely remarkable speech," gushed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who once also compared a disputed Indiana election to the actual Holocaust.
"It was Reaganesque."
In another glowing Twitter review, Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation, an increasingly MAGA-fied conservative think tank, declared: "This speech was not only the best #SOTU rebuttal ever — it's the future of conservatism and of the country."
Sanders, 40, described herself as a member of a new generation of Republicans and the future of her party, needling Biden for his age — the president turned 80 in November — and calling on voters to demand younger conservative candidates.
Giving the opposition party's SOTU response is perceived as a tough gig, even for experienced politicians. Sanders is brand new to public office, having been elected governor in November with no previous political experience — although she presumably knows the Arkansas governor's mansion well since her father, former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, occupied it for 10 years, beginning when she was 14.
To many observers outside the universe of Republican signs and signals, Sanders' speech seemed inexplicably strange. But her online fanbase has described her as a "phenomenally good speaker."
Sanders' bizarre and angry speech might have seemed inexplicably weird — to non-MAGA outsiders. But Newt Gingrich pronounced, "A Star Is Born."
Sanders' appearance came at a particularly challenging juncture for the GOP. With the party's acceleration to the far right under former President Donald Trump and its traditional "small government" ideology largely abandoned, its increasingly confrontational rhetoric around cultural issues threatens to alienate long-loyal moderate suburbanites while galvanizing progressives.
Seemingly unbothered by the GOP's shrinking reach, Sanders went straight at political wedge issues with little relevance outside the party's most ardent base. In a callback to her role as a White House press secretary who spread innumerable untruths, Sanders dazzled die-hard Trump supporters by spinning ideological straw into political gold.
Biden, she claimed, was "the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can't even tell you what a woman is," an obvious reference to the GOP's current obsession with gender roles and especially trans rights.
While the words "mob" and "presidency" in the same sentence may have provoked unwelcome thoughts of the Jan. 6 attack for some viewers, Sanders nonetheless used those images to lead the audience deeper into her dystopian fantasy.
"After years of Democrat attacks on law enforcement and calls to 'defund the police,' violent criminals roam free, while law-abiding families live in fear," she said. (In fact, crime rates remain low by historical standards, and after a pandemic spike, violent crime has receded in most of the country.)
Conjuring a dreamworld where "President Biden is unwilling to defend our border, defend our skies and defend our people," Sanders declared Biden "unfit to serve as commander in chief."
While Sanders offered no brass-tacks proposals about the impending debt ceiling showdown or how to curb inflation, she talked big about her brand new administration in Little Rock, claiming it would propose "the most far reaching, bold, conservative education reform in the country."
"I will never forget watching my dad, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and President Bill Clinton hold the doors open to the Little Rock Nine, doors that 40 years earlier had been closed to them because they were black," Sanders said, repeating near-identical remarks from her Jan. 15 inaugural speech.
That civil-rights anecdote was meant to contrast with the governor's now-revealed proposal to create a voucher program that directs public money to pay for private and homeschooling, bars the teaching of critical race theory and forbids instruction on sexual orientation. In broad terms, this fits within the right's national template of defunding or de-prioritizing public education.
With a fixed stare and a lyrical lilt reminiscent of her father's pulpiteering, Sanders outlined a persecution narrative that was likely unrecognizable to moderate voters — until she reached the apocalyptic crescendo.
"We are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn't start and never wanted to fight," she proclaimed, although the antecedent of "we" was not altogether clear. "Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols," she said.
That certainly sounds alarming, but specifics were again absent: What false idols and what flags, and where are these alleged rituals mandatory?
Finally — in what could read as either somber punctuation or a self-deprecating fourth-wall break — Sanders said: "That's not normal. It's crazy, and it's wrong."
Tears flowed in the audience. No, seriously.
"I've cried twice now," tweeted Federalist editor and election-denier Mollie Hemingway.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a onetime New York moderate turned MAGA loyalist, called the response "exceptionally strong." The sentiment was echoed by Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, who added "well done!" West Virginia's Republican co-chair Tony Hodge was succinct: "Bravo."
Daily Mail commentary offered effusive praise, even while maintaining some distance from Sanders' increasingly unpopular political patron.
"Just having Sanders say these things out loud is a welcome sign of change in the Republican Party," wrote columnist David Marcus. "Trump's legacy is multifarious … but perhaps no change to the party and conservative movement was as consequential as his willingness to battle political correctness when other Republicans cowered."
"Every day," Sanders said, "we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols." But who is "we"? And where exactly is this enforced idol-worship happening?
SOTU rebuttals are usually less about the aspirant delivering them and, as Politico's David Siders observed, more about giving voters a glimpse at the party's trending trajectory. Sanders is unlikely to go after national office in her first year as governor, and has politely avoided questions about her potential as a 2024 Trump running mate. Even so, her selection suggests the party is once again looking toward the famous suburban women voters it lost in the last three election cycles.
It also suggests that Republican leadership is struggling to hold together the increasingly disparate worlds of moderate and fringe Republicans, seeking to retain both old-guard stability and the vanguard's rabid enthusiasm. At least for the moment, Sanders enjoys popularity in both.
In a Thursday appearance on Fox News, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel said Sanders had "nailed it," affirming that she too sees Sanders as the face of a new generation of Republican leadership.
McDaniel offered only a complimentary afterthought, however, to the performance of Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., the freshman congressman who nabbed the honor of delivering the GOP's Spanish-language response.
Another rising star in a different register, Ciscomani won narrowly in a swing district, flipping a seat where Biden won in 2020. A more pragmatic, Chamber of Commerce-style Republican, he won over moderates and independents last fall by stumping on kitchen table issues, and tried to do the same in his SOTU rebuttal.
Ciscomani steered entirely clear of the ideological fantasy wars and wedge issues that defined Sanders' speech. He used the phrase "American dream" no less than 14 times, but never mentioned "woke mobs" or the worship of false idols.
Sporting a handsome white coiffure and an inviting tone, Ciscomani spoke warmly about his immigrant parents, the price of milk and eggs, the fight against fentanyl and the accessibility of homeownership. On Medicare and Social Security, he said simply that "cutting these programs is off the table."
"Let's put aside our differences and focus on results," he said. "We need a government that is accountable to the people, not leaders with excuses who focus more on criticizing the other party than finding real solutions." In other words, he said almost nothing that Joe Biden would find unacceptable.
Ciscomani's response directly followed SOTU coverage on both Univision and Telemundo — the nation's two main Spanish-language broadcasters — but his message went virtually unnoticed, especially compared to Sanders' sudden celebrity.
But given a gridlocked Congress and a party seemingly determined to undermine itself at every turn, Ciscomani could be seen as pointing toward a viable future for the GOP, which badly needs to maintain its recent gains among Latino voters and secure at least a few legislative victories. Whether the party faithful actually want that kind of future is anyone's guess.
