Is Sarah Huckabee Sanders the best the GOP could do last night?

Frank Bruni of The New York Times nails it. Here is a taste of his recent column:

I keep hearing and reading that many Republican leaders want to move on from Donald Trump. I can’t imagine why. His role in a riot that could have gotten some of them killed? His masterful design of their midterm debacle? The possibility he’ll be indicted any day now?

They’ve had enough, or so they keep signaling and whispering.

And then they go and choose Sarah Huckabee Sanders to deliver the party’s official response to President Biden’s State of the Union address.

Yeah, yeah: She’s young, she’s a working mom, she’s the first female governor of Arkansas (where she’s not yet through her first month in office). All of that says fresh start.

But nothing else about her does, not if you have a memory and a moral code. She spent nearly two years as Trump’s press secretary, the central figure in excusing his outrages and laundering his lies. She spent much of her campaign for governor invoking his name, appearing with him, even sending money his way — for the catering of fund-raisers for her at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump was her cause and then Trump was her springboard, and that’s what’s so fascinating about where she is now and what she’s being asked to do. She’s supposed to carry Republicans beyond Trump when she so carefully carries Trump inside her. It’s ludicrous. It’s perfect. It’s what makes her such a fitting mascot for a party that won’t come clean about the compromises it has made, the values it has trashed and the madness it has abetted.

Her big night isn’t necessarily a big prize. Giving the rebuttal to a State of the Union address hasn’t lifted those who’ve done it over recent years to the higher offices that many of them sought or dreamed about. I refer you to Bobby Jindal. To Marco Rubio. To Stacey Abrams.

Read the rest here.

Does Huckabee really represent a “new generation” with “new ideas?” Trump could have given this speech:

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