Commentary
I believe I’ve made my position on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez clear in a dozen or so blog reports, including her weak foreign policy knowledge demonstrated at the Munich Security Conference in February to her endorsement of Angie Nixon, the Democrat Socialist running for Senate in Florida.
But after scanning several opinion pieces on her that wound up in my stack of stuff, I thought it was time to revisit AOC with the views of others.
I consider Doug Schoen, a Democrat strategist who advised both Bill and Hillary Clinton a straight shooter. It’s why I hung on to a clipping of his Wall Street Journal op-ed, “AOC for President? Don’t Rule It Out.”
In it, he noted that “About a third of Democrats and Democrat-leaning adult identify as democratic socialists,” citing AOC’s relationship with Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Referring to her statement that she hadn’t “ruled out” a run, Schoen wrote, “She would be a formidable primary candidate,” noting that she had the highest favorability among five potential candidates. He added that she had more than 30 million social media followers.
David Smith opened his opinion piece, “Is the US ready for President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” in The Guardian with a quote from AOC: “They assume that my ambition is positional. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change the country.”
Referring to suggestions that she should first get Senate experience before attempting a run for president, like Barack Obama did, perhaps with a run against Sen. Chuck Schumer. “She’s almost guaranteed to win that Senate seat,”
Smith, stating “I don’t think she can go from being a congresswoman to a serious presidential candidate without some time in the Senate, quoting Tara Setmayer, cofounder of the Seneca Project, a women-led, bipartisan super-Pac committee.
Then there’s, “AOC unfit to lead nation,” written by Betsy McCaughey in The Mining Journal, a daily newspaper in Marquette, Michigan.
I’ve been following her since she served as lieutenant governor of George Pataki in New York and her subsequent positions with the Manhattan and Hudson Institutes.
She writes of Ocasio-Cortez, who earns $173,000 a year as a member of Congress, being fiscally irresponsible, holding taxpayers in utter disdain, with her refusal to pay back college student loans. Adding that she’s single and has no dependents.
“Yet she spends $22 a pop for signature Stila Stay bright red lipstick, about twice the cost of drug store lipstick,” while British Vogue praises her for her cutting-edge fashion and “power tailoring.”
In 2021, she joined Schumer and Elizabeth Warren in pressing Biden to offer $50,000 loan “forgiveness” to each debtholder and blasted him for not getting it done.
“AOC’s a moocher and she sides with the moochers,” says McCoughhey.
Regarding AOC’s appearance in Munich, mentioned in my opening paragraph, she was ripped in the media for her near 20-second delay as she stumbled to respond to defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion:
“Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is, this is of course a very longstanding policy of the United States,” she mumbled as she struggled to answer.
She later argued that conservatives seize on “any five-to-10 second thing” from her gaffe-filled remarks in an effort to “distract from the substance of what I am saying.”
But National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke said, “One could dissect her words for the next ten years straight, with the best of intentions, and still, one would not glean anything coherent or useful from them.”
Then there’s AOC’s support of Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist for Senate in Florida. “Angie will be an exemplary fighter for the working families of Florida,” she said, however, Florida, home to a large concentration of Cuban Americans, is generally opposed to socialism.
AOC has endorsed progressive primary winners in eight states, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, a high-profile campaign.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
