Before Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Ala.) had even begun her State of the Union rebuttal on Thursday night, an ally reportedly had already sent around a helpful list of talking points that conservative pundits could use to describe her — again, as-yet undelivered — speech. They should make comparisons to Ronald Reagan, according to the New York Times, which reported the memo. They should say that Britt came across as “America’s mom.”
When Britt did appear, it became clear she’d gone balls-to-the-wall with the mom theme, broadcasting solo from her Alabama kitchen in such a way that, if you were watching with the volume down, you would have assumed you had stumbled upon a commercial for either stain remover or Il Makiage. Turn the volume up and there was Britt opening by saying that her proudest role was being a “wife and mother,” before segueing into describing a violent gang rape, before calling Biden “dithering and diminished,” and explaining that we were all “steeped in the blood of patriots,” which, ladies — if that’s a menstruation euphemism, I hadn’t heard it before. Somehow she wrapped up by talking about how America put a man on the moon.
It’s not hard to imagine why Republicans chose Britt to deliver their rebuttal. At 81, Biden’s greatest liability is his age. Britt, at 42, is the youngest woman ever elected to the Senate, with school-aged kids at home.
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Was she effective? Hard to say. Somehow, despite also being a White 42-year-old mom who watched the State of the Union from my own kitchen, I did not feel I was her target audience.
This is the third consecutive State of the Union for which Republicans have chosen a woman to deliver the response (last year was Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the year before was Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds). Clearly, someone in charge is trying to sell the GOP as the party for women, and specifically, for moms.
The trouble is that they are trying to sell it that way once a year, via a televised State of the Union rebuttal, rather than by selling it via policies and legislation. So much of the rest of the night revealed a contrast between what Britt’s party had done for women, and how women and mothers were actually living their lives.
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In his speech, Biden announced a White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research (women have been traditionally understudied in the medical community), and presumably moms will benefit from that. He vowed to “ramp up federal enforcement of the Violence Against Women Act,” and presumably moms will benefit from that, too (though 172 Republicans voted against reauthorizing it back in 2021).
In the gallery, Democratic women were a sea of white — white pantsuits, white dresses — all intended to signify their support of abortion and reproductive rights, which were yanked away nationally with the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, and then chipped away incrementally via Republican state legislatures around the country.
Many guests who attended the event reflected this theme, too. First lady Jill Biden brought along Kate Cox, the Texas mother of two who was forced to flee her own state after the Supreme Court there denied her a doctor-recommended abortion for an unviable fetus. The first lady also brought Latorya Beasley from Alabama, whose IVF treatments were suddenly halted when the state Supreme Court ruled that embryos can be considered children. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) invited Elizabeth Carr, the woman who, 42 years ago, became the first child conceived in the United States via in vitro fertilization. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) invited Caitlin Bernard, the doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim.
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Bernard received a kidnapping threat for her infant daughter after performing that act.
Bernard is an American mom, too, even if we haven’t been emailed talking points instructing us to call her America’s mom.
Do their experiences as women carry more weight than Britt’s? Of course not. Women are not a monolith, and I am assuming there were plenty of viewers who were very moved by Britt’s rebuttal.
Toward the end, when she stared into the camera and implored, “Tonight, I want to make a direct appeal to the parents out there — and in particular, to my fellow moms.” She later continued, “First of all, we see you, we hear you, and we stand with you.”
But moms aren’t monolith, either. And so it wasn’t entirely clear which ones she thought she was representing, sitting there in her kitchen. Some may have seen themselves in the latest Republican to talk about how women and moms figure into their vision for America. Others have seen enough elsewhere to know where they stand.
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Elizabeth Carr was the first child conceived via in vitro fertilization. She was the first child conceived in the United States via in vitro fertilization. This article has been corrected.
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