I‘m going to make a rare concession about someone who I think fundamentally does not understand basic economics, has no respect for constitutional liberalism, and is second only to President Trump in her onion-thin skin and relentless hostility toward the press.
I get why people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It’s objectively impressive that she beat out a Democratic stalwart and became the youngest woman ever elected to the House. After five years of Obamacare further consolidating the health insurance cartel and corroding consumer power, nearly a decade of Republicans promising they’d repeal and replace Obamacare the moment they took power, and two years of Republican power resulting in nothing serious, I understand why well-intentioned young people would gravitate toward the radicalism of “Medicare for all.”
Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is attractive, and much like President Trump, she can be charming in spite of a propensity to get defensive at times. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will have to handle her policy radicalism, but there are also benefits to keeping her around.
But there’s another Democratic FreshFaceTM whose value I fail to understand. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., another democratic socialist, checks off all the progressive check boxes, but unlike Ocasio-Cortez, her only contribution to the debate since entering Congress has been to spew anti-Semitic drivel about once a fortnight.
Here’s an incomplete list of Omar’s greatest hits of Jew-bashing and genocide-baiting:
In 2012, Omar invoked the classic anti-Semitic trope of the vast Israeli conspiracy “hypnotiz[ing] the world,” asking Allah to “awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
In 2013, Omar blamed terrorism on American “involvement in other people’s affairs” during a radio interview with Ahmed Tharwat, who previously equated Hamas to Holocaust victims and referred to Israel as the “Jewish ISIS.”
On her very first day in the House, Omar palled around with Linda Sarsour. Sarsour has ardently defended Rasmea Odeh, a terrorist convicted of murdering two Jews, and Louis Farrakhan, who has compared Jews to termites.
After Bari Weiss of the New York Times called out Omar for her past of anti-Semitic rhetoric, the congresswoman finally apologized for the 2012 tweet and for not previously “disavowing the anti-Semitic trope I unknowingly used.”
But then the next month, she claimed that AIPAC controls Congress’ support of Israel, evidently because it pays members to support Israel. As she put it, “It’s all about the Benjamins.”
Pelosi and the Democratic House leadership condemned the remarks, demanding an apology from Omar, who issued a milquetoast equivocation that Democrats tepidly accepted. But later in February, at a public event, an audience member shouted, “It’s all about the Benjamins!” Omar smiled along knowingly.
Over the weekend, Omar sparred with fellow Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, who called out the congresswoman for continuing to peddle anti-Semitic tropes. Omar responded by doubling down on the notion that American Jews who support Israel hold dual “allegiance” to “a foreign country.”
For all the fracas, what benefit has Omar given the Democratic Party? She’s currently riding on the coattails of Ocasio-Cortez while failing to provide any tangible policy benefit to the party. Omar has outright humiliated herself in public appearances, most notably during her questioning of Elliott Abrams in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She not only failed to address him by the proper name and employ correct pronunciation and enunciation, but she also advanced an aggressive narrative that was inaccurate and perhaps even anti-American.
Either the Democratic Party leadership has ceased to care about anti-Semitism, or they’re scared that enough of their base has come around to embracing it that they’d rather remain silent than do something of substance. And that’s a prospect that’s far more horrifying that anything Omar has said herself.
