THE DOUBLE STANDARD FOR TRUMP SPOKESWOMAN SARAH SANDERS:

Liberal male columnists have written about Sanders in terms that, if applied to a progressive woman, would be recognized as despicable and borderline misogynistic. In the most infamous example, Los Angeles Times writer David Horsey called her a “slightly chunky soccer mom” in a scathing column. It was so clearly offensive that he was forced to issue an apology: “I want to apologize to Times readers — and to Sarah Huckabee Sanders — for a description that was insensitive and failed to meet the standards of our newspaper. I’ve removed the offending description.”

Just when you think a media establishment that has lost its collective mind, credibility, and sense of decency since last November can’t go any lower, it does. These sexist, cruel taunts have little to do with Sanders’s job performance or making sure the American public gets the facts from a sometimes fact-averse White House. Viewed from a wider lens, the treatment of Sarah Sanders has little to do with Sanders at all. The vicious ridicule is directed at all conservative women — particularly women from the South — whom the Left will never forgive for helping elect Donald Trump. It’s on a continuum with attacks against conservative women such as Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, and Betsy DeVos. The hatred is aimed at all female Trump voters — Sanders is simply a proxy. A year that began with faux feminists participating in the Women’s March, where aggrieved women loudly pledged to defend their sisterhood against sexist bullying or attacks, is ending with a whimper.

As all the best people who hold themselves out as progressive intellectuals believing in hope, tolerance and diversity told me about Sarah Palin in 2008, “She’s not a woman, she’s a Republican.”