Sen. Britt is not ready for prime time, at least not yet
Let’s take a seat around the kitchen table of Alabama Sen. Katie Britt. After all, she just invited the nation
to do so.
Britt asked us to peer into her life as a mother of two and a wife who also happens to be among the youngest women serving in Congress.
Unrolling her image as a “just-like-you” persona to American women was the goal of her unfortunate GOP reply to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech.
The bland beige kitchen setting, the ridiculous rise-and-fall cadence of her words and the wideeyed stares into the camera have already been widely pilloried.
Social media lit up before Britt concluded. Prompts were given to weigh in on who could spoof her best on SNL. Even Republicans groused about choosing Britt.
She will get beyond this snippet, a blip, really, in her political career. She has a long track record as a Senate staffer and a Senate chief of staff. She’s an attorney serving on the Senate Appropriations, Rules and Banking, and Housing and Urban Development committees.
But she needs to free herself of the handlers who wrote that script. The words about what fears keep American mothers up at night aren’t as she stated. And she knows it.
Appealing to younger women voters, those who aren’t already far right and deeply baked into the MAGA fan base, calls for a different approach — an honest one, not these words by Britt: “I worry my own children may not even get a shot at living their American Dreams.”
Seriously? You’re a
U.S. Senator, married to a former NFL player-turned-lobbyist. Your children were born with the golden tickets of college-educated parents with steady incomes and social capital.
That kitchen may be starkly bland in décor, but it’s a safe bet that the fridge is well stocked, that it will always be, and that Britt’s children will have their college paid for by their parents or through scholarships earned with the help of attending solid K-12 schools. She should speak to families with far less access to good schools. They’d school her on why most people never leave the class they were born into.
Patterns of social mobility are not affected by whoever is president. The statistics involve systemic issues of educational quality, housing and the cost of higher education.
Britt then trod the “American Dream” commentary a bit further, reaching for undocumented immigrants and the humanitarian crisis of asylum seekers at the southern border. What a strange segue. The American Dream is a common frame for the aspirations of the very migrants that Britt proceeded to paint as a marauding horde, out to steal the security of the nation and yes, to violate virginal young women.
She spoke of a young girl whom she met at the border who’d been trafficked and raped by cartels, no doubt a true story.
Then she switched to talking about sexual assaults of women in the U.S., citing one high-profile case: that of 22-yearold Laken Riley, involving an undocumented immigrant who has been charged with her murder. “That could have been my daughter. It could’ve been yours,” she said.
Britt should ask her
GOP brethren about their opposition to gun laws and regulations that would keep women safe from people convicted of domestic violence. This is how most women are attacked. They’re hurt or killed by men who once claimed to love them. The perpetrators are men with ready access to firearms.
Here’s another bit from Britt’s speech: “From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders … there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of President Biden’s senseless border policies.” American mothers should worry about overdoses. Stopping fentanyl from entering the country is necessary, but the responsible parental response should be closer to that kitchen table.
Why are teenagers seeking drugs like Percocet or ecstasy, both of which can be laced? Britt should demand better access to mental health services.
What’s so disappointing is that the GOP squandered the role a younger female member of their delegation could play for the party.