Republicans have an 鈥淎OC鈥� phobia
For Republicans, there is, indeed, a national emergency.
They’ll swear it could easily destroy America, while it lays waste to our way of life.
This national emergency isn’t caused by anything sneaking north from Mexico.
It started in the Bronx and Queens New York.
Right-wingers don’t even like to call it by its full name.
They simply call it “AOC!”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes has only been in Congress for two months, and nine days.
She gives Republicans the heebie-jeebies every time she says anything about anything.
There’s probably no cure for the heebie-jeebies. It just goes away on its own.
Until then, members of the GOP will mention “AOC,” as if they’re somnambulists in the throes of anxiety disorders.
I feel for them. (But not that much)
The only thing more frightening, to them, is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez self-identifies herself as a Democratic Socialist.
Or, more appropriately, she’s a member of the “Democratic Socialists of America.”
What could be scarier than “AOC’s” party affiliation?
Well, she already has 3.1 million Twitter followers.
That’s more than our venerable Speaker of the House – Nancy Pelosi.
So, whenever she speaks, people listen.
Except, when Republicans listen, they don’t hear what everybody else hears.
And when they responded, it sounded like they’d enjoy sending out a posse to bring “AOC” to heel.
That’s not going to happen.
The more she speaks, the more respect she seems to be getting from her fellow Democrats.
There’ve been times when I wasn’t in complete support of the things she’s said.
Unlike Republicans, though, I’m certain she’s not going to transform the U.S. Capitol building into the Kremlin east, or west or wherever it would be.
She’s only 1/535th of the U.S. Congress. Yet, every chance Republicans get, they try to convince everybody that she has a stranglehold on the entirety of the U.S. government.
It’s becoming silly how Fox News can work in a dig at “AOC.”
It’s like the entire network has a crush on her.
Last week, Fox News analyst Britt Hume claimed, “She’s kinda adorable, sort of, in the way that a 5-year-old child can be adorable.”
For the record, she’s 29 years-old, and she may be “adorable,” but so is our president, but “in the way a 3-year-old child can be adorable.”
(See what I did there?)
You can expect Fox News to mock an up-and-coming Democratic star.
That’s in their nature.
At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), “AOC” became the “star” in absentia, by being the butt of numerous jokes.
They just loved telling their fellow conference-goers that “AOC” wants to do away with cows. (This has something to do with methane gas. No need to go any further than that.)
Ocasio-Cortez has co-sponsored the 14-page proposal called the Green New Deal, which has an array of proposals that address climate change over a ten-year period.
The word “cow”, or “cows” doesn’t appear in that proposal.
But that didn’t stop Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) from standing on the CPAC stage and saying, “You know, with this Green New Deal, they’re trying to get rid of all the cows.”
Meadows obviously didn’t bother to read the proposal before he spouted off about it.
Meadows was speaking to a sympathetic audience that day.
Unlike when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee who implied he was a racist for bringing a black woman to their February 27th hearing, and he tried to use her as a prop.
Shame on him.
Ironically, at that same hearing, Ocasio-Cortez shined.
She asked the appropriate questions of President Trump’s ex-attorney, Michael Cohen. Those questions have been applauded by her fellow Democrats – and beyond.
She asked Cohen if her client – Trump – had ever inflated assets to insurance companies.
Cohen answered in the affirmative.
She then asked him who knew about that.
Cohen responded by named three people.
A few days later, as a result of Ocasio-Cortez’s question and Cohen’s answers, the New York State Finance Department subpoenaed the Trump insurance broker.
And that, I’m almost embarrassed to say, is NOT hot air.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net