Senate

Republicans say Britt being treated like Sarah Palin 2.0

by Alexander Bolton - 03/12/24 6:00 AM ET

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt’s (R) debut on the national political stage is prompting comparisons to another fiery conservative mom: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

The comparisons took a new life late Saturday, when Britt’s theatrical appearance was parodied by Scarlett Johansson on “Saturday Night Live” — much as Palin was parodied by Tina Fey in 2008.

Even some Republicans acknowledged Britt’s delivery was “over the top,” but they viewed the intense backlash from Democrats and media pundits as driven by a fear that Britt’s aw-shucks presentation as a mom sitting in a kitchen might actually peel away women voters from Biden.

Britt is now being mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate, the spot Palin filled on former Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) posted on the social media platform X that Britt’s delivery was “over-the-top” and “out of character,” just like Biden’s, but he opined “the media overreaction to hers” and lenient response to Biden “tells us who liberals most fear as VP nominee.”

Vin Weber, a GOP strategist, agreed with Romney’s assessment that Democrats see Britt as a real threat and want to clip her wings as quickly as possible, which is what they tried to do to Palin when she threatened to pull women voters away from former President Obama in 2008.

“I think Katie Britt is one of the most impressive people to come to the Senate in a long time. I think that the Democrats know that she is a rising star in the Republican Party, and if they can do something to tarnish her early on in her career, they’re going to do it,” he said.

“They don’t want to see an attractive, articulate, intelligent, rising star — a young woman, particularly — in the Republican Party,” he added.

FILE – Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., speaks as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Weber said Palin, who was the most popular governor in the country in 2008, similarly scared Democrats, pointing to polls in 2007 that showed Palin with 93 percent and 89 percent approval among voters.

“The way she was treated was unfair, and the way Sen. Britt’s being treated is unfair,” he said.

Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former Senate leadership aide, said Britt’s lampooned State of the Union response brought him back to September 2008, when Palin burst onto the national political stage by describing herself as a “hockey mom” who got her start in politics by signing up for the PTA.

“This gives me bad flashbacks to Sarah Palin,” said Manley, who argued that in both cases, Republicans picked people without a thorough vetting.

“Sen. Britt has an extremely conservative voting record, but no one is paying attention to that,” he added.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) selected Britt to deliver the response in what was widely interpreted as a play to appeal to women voters, whom McConnell has said in the past will be crucial to determining control of the Senate.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), McConnell’s top deputy, on Monday defended Britt’s speech as effective.

“I thought that her remarks were really good. I think they drew a nice contrast with what the president had to say,” Thune told reporters.

Britt on Thursday introduced herself as the senator from Alabama but downplayed that as less important than being “a proud wife and mom of two school-age kids.”

She went for a homey setting in her beige-toned, warmly decorated kitchen, while providing some dark rhetoric.

“Right now, the American dream has turned into a nightmare for so many families,” she declared before launching into an attack on Biden’s border policies and then detailing the horrifying ordeal of a victim of sex trafficking who was raped for hours a day at the age of 12.

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She then ticked off “fentanyl poisonings” and “horrific murders” as more fallout from Biden’s policies and talked about the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, whom she said “was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland.”

Political experts immediately saw Britt’s high-profile response as an audition to become former President Trump’s running mate in 2024.

She hit on the same themes Trump did when he launched his campaign in 2015 by declaring criminals and rapists were flooding into the country from Mexico.

Britt also drew comparisons to Palin among social media pundits, such as political journalist Ed Krassenstein, who marveled: “Is it just me or is Alabama Senator Katie Britt the 2024 version of Sarah Palin?”

Fifteen years ago, Palin introduced herself at the Republican convention by talking about her family before laying into the Democratic nominee, Obama, painting him as a defeatist ready to give up on victory in Iraq and eager to meet with terrorist states seeking nuclear weapons.

“You know, they say the difference is between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick,” Palin famously quipped in a joke that went viral.

Ross K. Baker, a professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University who has served several Senate fellowships, said Britt, a former chief of staff to former Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and former CEO of the Business Council of Alabama “is smarter than Sarah Palin” and probably realizes she now “has some work to do on her own image” after the tidal wave of criticism met her State of the Union remarks.

Baker referred to Johansson’s satirical “Saturday Night Live” portrayal of Britt as “Tina Fey plus 10 in terms of accuracy.”

But he also noted Britt’s turn in the spotlight probably plays well in Alabama and other deep red parts of the country.

While many critics on social media mocked Britt’s at-times breathy performance during her State of the Union response, some media criticized Britt for telling a story about a victim whose experiences took place before Biden’s time in office.

The New York Times characterized Britt’s anecdote as “misleading,” and she was later challenged about it by “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream.

Britt told Bream she didn’t mean to give the impression that the wrenching story of a woman being serially raped by a Mexican cartel had happened on Biden’s watch.

It quickly came to light that the incidents Britt described happened years ago, well before Biden’s election in 2020.

Then media groups on Monday identified the victim in Britt’s story as Karla Jacinto Romero, who told CNN in an interview her story had been “distorted for political purposes.”

The victim explained she was kept in captivity from 2004 to 2008, during the Bush administration, by a pimp working separately from the cartel and that she was not trafficked in the United States.

Britt and Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) met Jacinto Romero during a trip to the border last year, according to a Senate Republican press release.

Britt’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this article and ignored reporters’ questions about the sex-trafficking claim after Monday’s Senate GOP leadership meeting.

Thune on Monday pushed back on criticism that Britt tried to unfairly blame Biden for the suffering of the sex trafficking victim she highlighted after the State of the Union.

“I think she pointed out in her remarks that the situation in the border is allowing a lot of women to be exploited in ways that are just awful,” he said.