I have never paid too much attention to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Not for any particular reason, other than the fact that she was overshadowed by the looming presence of her boss Donald Trump.

So it was a revelation to me when she gave the first watchable response to the State of the Union address that I have ever seen. I have no idea how many people watched it, but I am pretty sure that clips from the speech will run for days in the media and on Twitter.

There’s no other way to put it: she killed it. She came out swinging, massaged all the Republican erogenous zones, made an appeal for normalcy that actually didn’t ring false, and made herself relatable through effective storytelling.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders: "We are under attack in a left wing culture war we didn't start, and never wanted to fight. Every day we are told we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols…That's not normal. It's crazy, and it's wrong."

🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/p571fv9cJ1

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 8, 2023

She didn’t engage in bombast but definitely didn’t hold back in her criticism of Biden or the cultural craziness of the Democrat Party.

Republicans are in a weird position on the culture wars and have been for decades. On the one hand, most Americans agree with us on the basic issues, but on the other hand, the public sees Republicans, wrongly, as aggressors in the culture wars. Simply put, Americans prefer not to think too much about these issues, and default to a mode of tolerance and avoidance of difficult topics.

Pull out a book that sits in a public school library and show it to people; they get disgusted by it but blame you for showing it to them. Why are you showing them pornography, they ask? The fact that it is liberals who put it there doesn’t sink in, because it is so absurd that anybody would hand that to a kid. We get blamed for pointing it out.

But things are changing, because the Left is going warp speed in the culture wars, and Huckabee Sanders went there–as a mom.

Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered a scathing rebuke of “the radical left’s America” during the GOP rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Sanders, who served as White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump, attacked what she called the Biden administration’s “woke fantasies” and what she called its worship of “false idols” in her blistering remarks.

“In the radical left’s America, Washington taxes you and lights your hard-earned money on fire, but you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves, and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country,” Sanders said Tuesday night.

“The Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day,” Sanders said.

“Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight.”

Yep. Spot on.

I have had this conversation with my liberal friends multiple times. The culture wars come up and they get angry at Republicans for obsessing on the topics.

My response? We aren’t the aggressors in this. We are on defense. We aren’t demanding the overturning of Western culture, the Left is. The Left is pushing male crotches in the faces of kids, encouraging them to visit Grindr, and demanding they be sterilized and mutilated out of “compassion.”

What are we expected to do? Submit? Turn children over to pedophiles?

Gov. @SarahHuckabee: “Biden is unwilling to defend our border, defend our skies, and defend our people. He is simply unfit to serve as commander in chief.” pic.twitter.com/5HqgDF8I69

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 8, 2023

Sanders threw it back in their faces, and while the Left will scream bloody murder, they will be doing it to a mom defending her children. A sober, smart, articulate, and relatable mom.

“Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags and worship their false idols – all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is: your freedom of speech,” she added, an apparent reference to the bombshell Twitter Files reports late last year that detailed the FBI’s successful bid to influence Twitter to censor The Post’s explosive 2020 report on the Hunter Biden laptop.

She went on to offer a GOP vision of the country with “strong families” and “safe communities.”

“Republicans believe in an America where strong families thrive is safe communities; where jobs are abundant and paychecks are rising; where the freedom our veterans shed their blood to defend is the birthright of every man, woman and child,” she said.

Sanders became the youngest governor in the country, at 40, after her November victory over Chris Jones in Arkansas, which offered a youthful contrast to the 80-year-old president who delivered the State of the Union.

The speech was the opposite of a SOTU. It was brief, pointed, emotionally charged, and riveting. If she was off on any one thing it was that she seemed a bit stern at times, never smiling.

Still, I actually listened. This is amazing since I HATE these things, especially the responses which are usually dull disappointments.

"Republicans believe in an America where strong families thrive in safe communities. Where jobs are abundant & paychecks are rising. Where the freedom our veterans shed their blood to defend is the birthright of every man, woman, & child" – @SarahHuckabee https://t.co/8YHZf3o8Qr

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) February 8, 2023

Sanders has done what countless others in her place have tried to do: elevate themselves far above the pack. I was genuinely shocked at how well she did.

Perhaps if I had paid more attention when she was in Washington, I wouldn’t have been.