Especially since the election, the conservative media has been obsessed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, running stories about her almost daily. Even, humorously, a story on Breitbart about Ocasio-Cortez pointing out how the GOP is obsessed with her.
I get that she’s a scary Democratic Socialist, and she’s young, a woman, a minority, an east coast “big city” liberal and all that, but there seems to be something else, some sort of an X factor that has caused my conservative FB friends to share waaay more stories about her than her meager influence would suggest is reasonable.
I think she represents what conservatives fear most, being overrun by demographic changes.
The gop is a party of elderly white conservative with patriarchal views.
Young people prefer the democrats by big margins, are multicultural, multiracial, feminist and do not fear socialism.
I think Cortez is the embodiment of the first wave of what the gop fears, a future where multiracial, multicultural young people vote in such huge numbers that they overwhelm elderly white conservative voters.
Conservative media thrives on keeping its viewers outraged or afraid. She is just the latest embodiment of the scary threat that is coming to change your country and disparage everything good and decent. This is entirely a manufactured persona, one also borne by Nancy Pelosi.
On the one hand, she is a budding rising star, and the GOP fears that.
But she’s also said a lot of nonsensical things that are just begging to be memed: Like, “In capitalism, man oppresses man. In socialism, it’s the other way around.” Wait, so…in socialism, man oppresses man?
I think the answer to your question would depend on who initially brought up the topic of whatshername. Some people may simply be responding to any new topic of conversation. Others may want to know what their conservative FB friends opinions are on this particular subject. Once a topic is opened, people join in.
100% of the time it’s one of my conservative friends, completely unprompted, posting some link to the Daily Wire or some other garbage website saying, “Look how dumb this person is! Liberals are so dumb.”
They are obsessed. Nobody else is bringing her up, and they are not looking for a discussion. They just want people to point and laugh along with them (but it’s never funny).
The original (“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite”) has been attributed to J.K. Galbraith. Not clear if he actually said it, but it’s been around since at least the 1970s, if not longer.
She isn’t close to having widespread appeal within the Democrat party yet. For the foreseeable future, conservatives focusing on her is a way of focusing on schisms and perceived party in-fighting.
Reminds me of George Soros. I have never heard a liberal say something like “As George Soros always says…” or some version of “thank god Soros is on that”. But he’s a point of obsession on the right.
I think the Democrats started this one. She was on the Colbert show, she got a lot of attention, obviously she’s young, photogenic, idealistic and conveniently located near the major media outlets in New York. That set her up as a target for the other side, who are always happy to leap at any bait offered. So now she’s a divisive figure. Her supporters like that she is like them and can’t afford to live in DC. Fox freak out and mock her and seem to think she’s a poseur.
She has essentially been Congresswoman-elect for several months in advance as her district is a large Democrat district. Therefore she was invited on all the big talk shows and appearing on political shows outlining her ideas - these ideas are very progressive, spoken with tremendous enthusiasm and conviction. She believes in what she says unlike others who shift to the left in the primaries only to shift back over to the middle in the general election.
She is young and with more and more young people being engaged with politics it is a problem for them because it shifts the future landscape towards democrats. Young people for a long while didn’t show up to vote and generally had apathy towards their public officials. Now the public officials are reflecting themselves more. Complacency is no longer an option and that will hurt Republicans long term.
