I wonder if Huckabee Sanders is confused.
I wonder if Sarah Huckabee Sanders, deputy White House press secretary, is a little confused. After all, being raised by a minister father, Gov. Mike Huckabee, who claimed to be a Christian of the love-the-poor, sufferthe-little-children variety, and who claimed at one point to be the loving face of the kinder, friendlier GOP, she must have believed herself and her party to stand for these things.
Nowadays, her face often seems to reflect an attempt to cover dismay with a kind of faith and good cheer as she defends the latest ruling from the Trump administration — from banning the poor children of Syria to stripping the sick and impoverished of their health coverage. As she defends the Muslim ban, does she think of the 2008 presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee? Huckabee said, “I want to be clear: If someone is looking for a president who is going to have a mean spirit toward other human beings, I’m not their guy. I’ll fix the borders, I’ll secure them, but what I won’t do is to do it because I’m angry at them for wanting to come here for the same reason that the rest of us love America.”
Does she remember that? (Surely she does since she was his national political director.)
One wonders what she really thinks — in her heart of hearts — when she reads that her dad tweeted on March 16: “Hoping @POTUS tells Hawaii judge what Andrew Jackson told overreaching court — ‘I’ll ignore it and let the court enforce their order.’”
The same Huckabee who wanted to transform the GOP in 2008 (to represent all Americans) here publicly embraces the moment in which Andrew Jackson both rejected the Constitution and its notion of checks and balances, and decided not to honor our treaty with the Native Americans. Instead, he marched them off their land and across the country, an upheaval that would cost thousands of Cherokee lives. Ignoring the Supreme Court, Jackson chose gold over honor, might over mercy and presidential power over the governing structure of the land.
If Sarah Sanders believes in benefits to the rich over the poor, corporations over individuals, the sick over the well, and if she still calls herself a Christian, then what is Christianity? If she believes that the court’s rulings should be overthrown by a single president (one not elected by a majority), that a president should act like a monarch, then what is a Republican?
Perhaps Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells herself that she is still a good Christian and still a good Republican. However, the rest of us may have to change our definitions of those words. As for me, I remember the words of the younger and less cynical Mike Huckabee, who said: “Let us never sacrifice our principles for anybody’s politics. Not now, not ever.”