
Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders undercut President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as beholden to “woke fantasies” and untethered from mainstream America.
“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,” Sanders, who is tasked with giving the GOP response, said in prepared excerpts released before the president’s speech.
Tuesday’s event marked the rapid elevation for Sanders, who was sworn into elected office for the first time just weeks ago. However, she is far from a political neophyte, as her father held the same position she now occupies from 1996-2007 and Sanders previously served as press secretary in the Trump White House. She also represents a new class of Republicans attempting to marry Trumpism with more traditional parts of GOP orthodoxy.
In one of her first acts as governor, Sanders garnered national attention for a directive banning the term Latinx across the Arkansas government. In her Tuesday response, Sanders similarly waded into culture war subjects that have animated conservatives in the Biden years, inveighing against “false idols” of the left and other conservative punching bags.