“She came off like America’s mom.” “Reminiscent of Reagan’s message of that Shining City on a Hill.” “His speech was tone deaf. Hers was the perfect pitch.” These were all reviews of Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s official Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday night—lines crafted by allies and distributed to sympathetic conservative influencers before Biden or Britt had even uttered a word, according to the New York Times. When it finally came time for Britt to speak, her address was less shining city on a hill and more failed country in the gutter. She painted Biden’s America as a violent hellscape overrun by undocumented immigrants. And the cadence of her delivery was not so much the perfect pitch as that of an overwrought one-woman play off-off-off Broadway.

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