Sarah Huckabee Sanders is in a heap of trouble in Arkansas
I haven’t written much about Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ “lectern gate” scandal in Arkansas, because I have no faith in the Arkansas state government’s willingness to actually hold her accountable. I still have no such faith. Arkansas is one of the most overwhelmingly corrupt Republican-controlled red states out there, which is part of how someone as horrid as Sanders managed to become Governor to begin with. But this may finally be getting away from her.
If you haven’t been following this scandal, it appears that Sarah Huckabee Sanders may have spent around $19,000 on a trip for her friends to go overseas, then tried to hide that money by pretending she spent it on a lectern (essentially a podium) that didn’t actually cost anything near that amount.
These kinds of scandals play on two levels: the political and the criminal. For this to become a criminal scandal, there would need to be cut and dried proof that the corrupt act took place and that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was in on it. This proof can be much harder to come by than one would think. The only people who can provide testimony and evidence that Sanders was in on it are the other people who were also in on it, and they’re far more inclined to stick with her than flip on her. Think “Bridge gate” in New Jersey, where prosecutors tried to work their way up to Chris Christie but just couldn’t find the “beyond a reasonable doubt” level proof they needed.
But this Sarah Huckabee Sanders thing is nonetheless a growing political scandal. Do far right Republican voters care that she may have stolen their money and spent it illegally and covered it up? Of course not. Sanders spews precisely the ignorant bigoted rhetoric that they’re addicted to, so why would they care?
But at some point this kind of scandal drags on and on for long enough, and it ends up becoming the entire story. The majority of voters in Arkansas might not care about the scandal, but eventually they’re going to get tired of hearing about it. It’s the kind of thing that makes them get tired of Sanders being their designated bullshitter, and makes them wish they could have some new designated bullshitter with less baggage instead.
That’s when the pressure builds for someone like Sanders to panic and try to make the scandal “go away” – and that’s usually when a dummy like Sanders screws things up. Maybe she’ll try to scapegoat it all onto a loyal sidekick, who then feels burned and starts cooperating with investigators. Or maybe she ends up directly incriminating herself while trying to make it all go away. It’s typically how dummies Sanders do themselves in.
At this point it’s starting to feel like this lectern scandal isn’t going away. It’s starting to feel like it’s the kind of thing that Sarah Huckabee Sanders will panic about and try to make go away. And it’s starting to feel like she just might do herself in along the way.
I’m not saying Sarah Huckabee Sanders is going to prison (that would be a very steep hill to climb in a scandal like this, in a state like this). I’m not even saying she’s going to end up resigning (the bar is just that low in red states). I’m just saying that it finally feels like this scandal has reached a stage where she’s going to step in and unwittingly make it much worse for herself. Stay tuned.
