Conservatives should welcome more Democratic Party candidates in the ideological vein of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I say that because Ocasio-Cortez is well outside the mainstream of American political thought. And when, as is almost certain, the 28-year-old wins election from her progressive 14th Congressional District of New York, she’ll crystallize the Democrats significant drift to the Left. That will give conservatives new opportunity to explain why their ideology serves people better than progressive politics.
Of course, the establishment Left sees it very differently.
At Vox.com, which increasingly styles itself a sort of progressive reference guide, Dylan Scott argues that Ocasio-Cortez’s support for the “emerging litmus test of the American left,” is a vote winner. This list includes Medicare for all, a federal jobs guarantee, tuition-free college for all, repealing the Citizens United Supreme Court decision by constitutional amendment (i.e., repealing the First Amendment), abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, restoring great depression era financial regulations, a “green new deal to be fossil free by 2035,” and banning privately owned prisons.
Scott uses polling data to suggest that these big ticket items are popular with the public. But that polling is quite deceptive. It asks how phrases like “Medicare for all” make respondents feel. But were it accurately reflective of public sentiments, the poll would ask respondents how they feel about the phrase “medicare for all, paid for by a $1 trillion annual tax increase.”
That clarity is the conservative opportunity.
In the Left’s presentation of public priorities, conservatives must point out the Left’s lie that big government can either be paid for by a never-defined class of “rich,” or not paid for at all. The simple fact is that free tuition, federal jobs for all and medicare for all would require vast across-the-board tax increases. And that’s before questions of quality and productivity are even factored into the equation. If not these tax increases, progressives would have to add to the catastrophic national debt (which matters greatly even though some progressives claim it does not).
Oh, and that’s aside from the free speech considerations that would prevent Citizens United being overturned, the soaring electricity bills that go with a “green new deal,” the economic decline that would go with a return to Depression-era financial regulations, and the national security-sovereignty concerns of eliminating ICE.
With facts on our side and new ideas at our fingertips, conservatives should welcome more candidates like Ocasio-Cortez. They are not the saviors of the Left, but walking advertisements for conservatism!
