The most obvious illogic embedded in Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ show trial on the premises of a Virginia restaurant is, of course, that the actors cheering this as a heroic act of #Resistance are the exact same ones who delight in the financial ruin of religious bakers and florists who exercise similar discretion in their provision of services.
The Left surely sees no such contradiction — they are Oskar Schindler and Sarah Sanders is aiding and abetting a Hitlerian regime — but then again, as Michael Knowles is fond of saying, if progressives had no double standards they would have no standards at all.
Sarah Sanders has been the subject of inordinate fury from hard left elements ever since she began her role as Press Secretary in July of 2017. Critics have resorted to criticizing her appearance and calling her what amounts to the female equivalent of Uncle Tom, and Sanders seems to be a favorite punching bag for the monolithic voices of late night television.
Some of this is certainly a result of the nature of her position; it is the unenviable job of a Republican press secretary to justify the policies of the current administration to a crowd of skeptical and probing journalists whose skepticism and probity seem routinely absent under Democrat presidents.
But there is a special scorn reserved for Sanders, of a species afforded few others in the Trump orbit, save perhaps Betsy DeVos. The contempt directed at Sanders is little different than the disdain held for most Trump voters by media types, who view both as being complicit in what they are convinced is an America teetering on the brink of fascism. Sarah Sanders says what many Trump voters internally believe or outwardly express, but on an elevated platform.
They would gladly throw you out of a restaurant too if you were candid about your beliefs on a sufficiently public basis.
Part of the consternation is almost certainly Sanders’ southern accent, which is evocative of a culture which the media despises as ignorant, backwards, and below their posh metropolitan taste. Part also is Sanders’ conservative Christianity; a belief in traditional sexual ethics is now considered not only outmoded but explicitly bigoted.
But more than anything, the Left and the media hate Sanders because they hate Trump voters. They don’t particularly want to share a country, let alone a restaurant, with their political opposites — the Left would as soon expel Sarah Sanders from Red Hen restaurant as they would all Trump voters if it were palatable to do so.
Until the Left is convinced that disagreements about marginal tax rates and immigration policy aren’t sufficient grounds for calling your opponent a Nazi, it’s unlikely they’ll want to share a meal with you anytime soon.