Despite the fact that President Trump is unleashing literal hell on innocent children on the Southern border and that economic inequality is growing greater by the day across the country, conservatives everywhere seem to have only one thing on their mind – newly elected Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The inability of the GOP to focus on anything other than the youngest progressive to ever get elected is indicative of the fact that her style of politics absolutely terrifies Republicans.
Here’s how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her bold ideas are living rent-free in the heads of conservatives everywhere, and what that means for the future of American politics.
They can’t stop talking about her
Whether you’re peering into the right-wing social media universe or taking a gander at whatever pro-Trump nonsense is coming out of the mouths of the propagandist at FOX, it’s clear to see that Republicans simply can’t stop talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As Brian Stelter of CNN’s Reliable Sources pointed out, FOX literally spent more time talking about the newly elected congresswoman’s shoes than they did about the damning climate change report issued by the federal government on the day of its release.
It’s worth asking why conservatives around the country are so obsessed with AOC, largely because the answer is both simple and quite revealing; they’re absolutely terrified of her politics. As a self-described Democratic Socialist who also happens to be a young woman of color, she represents a living nightmare for Republicans, physically embodying the simple fact that their brand of politics is going extinct while the progressive left is rising like never before.
Right-wing pundits and politicians can’t stop clinging onto every word she says because they desperately want to catch her in some gaffe in an effort to destroy her. This is because they have an insidious political world-view, one dominated by ad-hominem attacks and ceaseless scandals, and have no clue that real Americans care more about policies and sincerity than they do about “owning the libs.” More than anything else, the conservative paranoia about AOC illustrates that the future belongs to progressives.
With all due respect to the newly elected congresswoman, whose amazing story is an inspiration to aspiring progressives everywhere, she’s still an incredibly small fish in Washington’s huge political pond. In many ways, as a junior member of the House who’s ideologically isolated from many of her colleagues both in and outside of her party, she wields very little power. Still, the GOP is losing its mind over her presence – this is actually bolstering her political power and perpetually giving her brand of progressive politics the national spotlight when she’d otherwise be ignored as a nobody.
The fact that Republicans are going nuts about AOC is fantastic – her rent-free status inside the collective mind of the American right is surefire proof that the GOP is scared silly about candidates like her. When progressives around the country find themselves mulling about which candidates they should back at the polls, they should consider just how seriously worried Republicans everywhere are about the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.