Saturday, July 01, 2023

IF IT WEREN'T FOR PERFORMATIVE CONSERVATISM, THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY CONSERVATISM AT ALL

What does it mean to be an American right-winger in 2023? What really matters to the American right?

This is what really matters:
Joyless leftists, as they are prone to do, got all triggered when Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders' kids used chalk to draw a cross surrounded by colorful stained glass-like shapes on the driveway at the governor's mansion this week....

Quickly, the hall monitors at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State issued a demand letter: remove the chalk rendering of a cross.

The group claimed that its presence at the official home of Arkansas' executive was a violation of the Constitution....

In what should come as a surprise to no one, Gov. Sanders is not backing down....

In an official letter of her own obtained by Townhall on Friday, Sanders responded to Americans United.

"I have received your letter and my answer is no," Sanders wrote. "I will not erase the beautiful cross my kids drew in chalk on the driveway of the Governor's Mansion or remove my post on social media, and I will not now or ever hide that I am a Christian, saved by Christ."
Here's the driveway of the taxpayer-funded governor's mansion, with the artwork Sanders insists her children drew:


No, really, she says that her children -- the very young kids seen at the end of the driveway -- drew this all by themselves with their little crayons. And, presumably, they designed it all by themselves. (It may not be to your taste, but that's definitely a professional design.)

I don't know exactly how old the governor's kids are, but in September 2017, when she was the White House press secretary, Deadline said that the kids were 5, 3, and 2. So they're approximately 11, 9, and 8 now.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a real job -- she's the governor of a state with a population of 3 million people. Among the 50 states, Arkansas is 45th-best in health and safety, 46th-best in crime, and 47th-best in infant mortality. But instead of addressing these problems, Sanders spends her time on cockamamie schemes like this. In this case, someone with professional skill went to great trouble to draw this cross on the driveway, and someone brainstormed the specific narrative of this lib-baiting act until it was decided that she'd say it was a simple project the kids undertook because they love Jesus too. American United rose to the bait -- which was the point of the whole exercise -- and now Sanders gets another few national media hits, all in the service of her next campaign. (VP in 2024? President in 2028? She's only 40. The possibilities are endless.)

You'll recall that the first thing Sanders did as governor was to ban the use of the term "LatinX" in official state documents. A couple of months later, she signed a law calling for the construction of a monument to the unborn near the state capitol. In April, there was this:
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) is now selling “Real Women of Politics” can koozies, marking the latest Republican outrage over transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s partnership with the beer brand Bud Light.

Huckabee Sanders’ “Real Women of Politics” koozies offer four different choices that each feature a different Republican female governor, including herself, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

She promoted her new merchandise on Twitter on Monday, captioning the video, “Real women don’t have to fake it.”
Has Sanders done anything of substance? Oh, sure -- in March, she signed a bill that would make it easier for employers in the state to use child labor.

That's conservatism in 2023: 80% performative culture-war nonsense, 20% goodies for capitalists. Sanders has a bright future.

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