I watched the GOP response to President Biden’s 2024 State of the Union given by GOP Senator Katie Britt, currently serving her first term representing Alabama.
It was widely panned by people along the full range of the political spectrum for her insincere delivery and the setting – she was in her kitchen, or at least a kitchen. Strange place for a US Senator during the State of the Union. Why wasn’t she, like, at the Capitol with the other US Senators? She made a special trip home to give the GOP response in this setting. Maybe I’m being cynical. Maybe she’s just at home because it’s dinner time and her family is hungry.
Katie Britt is not someone on my radar before this speech but I have since learned she had a lot of experience as an aid and staffer on the Hill and she was one of the Republican senators that helped negotiate the bipartisan border bill that withered on the vine after political pressure from Donald Trump. I also heard her campaign to be senator was “hard fought” and showed a lot of political skill. She’s young and has school age children and presents quite a counterpoint to President Biden and for that matter, to most legislators.
In theory, she was a good choice to elevate and entrust with this role so why did it suck so hard? Because the GOP doesn’t understand modern American women and it shows.
Sen. Britt’s rebuttal started with a greeting (Greetings from my kitchen where my husband, Dadbradandchad and I worry; boy, do we worry) then biographical info. Good start. Quickly she pivoted to the “American Nightmare” in which are all living. Her speech circled round and round how awful Biden is and how “we all feel it.” Often treating us to angry whispers or sadness quivers. Prominent Republican women called it cringy or a lifetime movie audition. It was very “for just $5 a day – less than a cup of coffee – you could help a family unable to afford a firearm in Biden’s economy.”
She did have a section in her speech that was not vague. It was a migrant’s story of sexual violence at the hands of a cartel right after the intro. She lingered there, man. It was weird, gross and my 11 year old son looked like he was going to cry. I don’t know if he knows what she was talking about and I don’t know how to ask. Ooof.
The GOP is trying to lure back suburban women they lost in 2020 and 2022. Trump can’t win without them. So why would party leadership take an accomplished, serious woman and have her deliver a vague, overdramatized speech (with a sizeable section describing rape) in a pretty kitchen? Because they believe women are primarily fearful and only care about what happens inside the walls of their home. They believe women will stomach anything to be safe in their pretty kitchen, so make them afraid and that’s where they’ll stay.