An incoming Republican representative who grew up in the Soviet Union won her swing district running on an anti-socialist message aimed directly at “the Squad,” a group of young liberal Democrats pushing the party further left in recent years.
“I grew up in a socialistic country. It actually was the [Soviet] Republic of Ukraine,” Rep.-elect Victoria Spartz said. “In my 42 years, I grew up in socialism. I saw what happens when it runs out of money, and it’s not pretty.”
Spartz, who relocated to Indiana after meeting her American husband, will now represent Indiana’s 5th Congressional District. Before running for office, she became a successful businesswoman and has since stressed her belief in “limited government.”
“And now we’re building socialism. I’m kind of going full circles. I can tell you what is going to be next. It’s very sad for me to see that,” Spartz said.
Spartz said that “as a mother of two daughters, it made me get involved and do something about it because it’s not very good for our country.”
“We need to be good students of history,” Spartz continued. “Our country, for the last century, we fought against socialism — and a lot of young kids died. I took my kids to the beaches of Normandy, and you can see how many young kids died fighting for freedoms. How many wars were fought and were won.”
Members of the Squad, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have rejected the notion that their ideas are descended from those of the old Soviet Union, calling their policies “Democratic Socialism” instead.
But Spartz said that “there are only two systems: Freedom and free enterprise, and you have a system where government decides, political elites on top, how we’re going to live and what we’re going to do.”
“This system creates a lot of destruction and misery, so we have to be smarter than that,” Spartz said.
Her hard stance against socialism helped her defeat Democratic candidate, Christina Hale, despite the 5th Congressional District race being rated as “leans Democratic” by the Cook Political Report. When the dust settled in what was supposed to be a tight race, Spartz ended up winning by 4 points.
In the aftermath, many Democrats were apparently furious with the far-Left faction of their party for their poor election showing. Entering Election Day hoping for a “Blue Wave,” Democrats ended up losing seats in the House and did not manage to flip a single state legislature.
“No one should say ‘defund the police’ ever again. Nobody should be talking about socialism,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat from Virginia, said after the election. “If Democrats kept up the act in 2022, they’d “get f—ing torn apart.”
