Just a few weeks ago, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed she was cutting back on social media for mental health reasons, but that didn’t stop her from tangling with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) on Twitter yesterday.
It all started when Scott tweeted about a proposal from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), one of the approximately 7,135,804 Democrats currently running for the 2020 presidential nomination, to create a federal gun registry.
Scott slammed the idea as “terrible” and noted “[t]his would be scary if Booker had any chance of becoming President,” a perhaps harsh but likely accurate comment considering the jam-packed clown car that is the Democrats’ primary at the moment.
Next, he tweeted a sarcastic quip, pondering if the Democrats would next endeavor to require Americans to register if they owned any sharp knives, and then, “Maybe @AOC will make us register every time we buy meat as part of her #GreenNewDeal.”
🚨BREAKING: the latest terrible idea to come out of the Democrats' 2020 primary is a federal gun registry. If you want to buy a gun, @CoryBooker wants you to register with the federal government.
This would be scary if Booker had any chance of becoming President. (1/2) https://t.co/uJRLXo054E
— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) May 6, 2019
What's next? Will we have to register sharp knives? Maybe @AOC will make us register every time we buy meat as part of her #GreenNewDeal.
The Democrats are officially the @BernieSanders Party. They want America to be less prosperous and less free. (2/2)
— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) May 6, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez did not appreciate Scott making fun of her Green New Deal and attacked him for lacking “critical thinking” and “honesty,” and claiming that if he were a female candidate, “maybe you’d be called ‘unlikeable,’ ‘crazy,’ or ‘uninformed.'”
That a sitting US Senator can say something lacking so much critical thinking + honesty is embarrassing to the institution.
If you were a female candidate, maybe you’d be called “unlikeable,” “crazy,” or “uninformed.”
But since you’re not, this inadequacy is accepted as normal. https://t.co/KLkaYxfT6K
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 6, 2019
Scott fired right back, mocking her for failing to “understand sarcasm,” as well as pointing out that “America rejects socialism and will continue to do so.”
That a sitting Congresswoman doesn’t understand sarcasm would be embarrassing to the institution if you hadn’t embarrassed yours to the point of irrelevance already.
America rejects socialism and will continue to. https://t.co/bicJ8PEfD5
— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) May 6, 2019
First of all, Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is so unpopular even among her fellow Democrats that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has publicly voiced her lack of enthusiasm for it, making it very clear she had little interest in expending her political capital to help it advance. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the Democrats’ bluff and put up the Green New Deal for a vote, the majority of the Senate Democrats voted “present” rather than take a risk of going on the record supporting the bill.
The simple fact is that the Green New Deal is an unworkable set of legislative proposals that would impose restrictions far more extreme than Americans are willing to accept, and the savvier Congressional Democrats who value their own re-elections know that.
Scott knows AOC’s Green New Deal doesn’t actually require people to register when they buy a hamburger, but he was making a larger point about how ridiculous and unwieldy some of the proposals are, and how unpopular socialism actually is.
That’s called sarcasm.
Now, I don’t actually share the belief of some of AOC’s critics that she’s an idiot. Getting elected to Congress at such a young age — especially by first knocking out an incumbent of your own party — is no simple task.
But her constant frenzied habit of seeming to take every word from her critics overly seriously, while insisting that her own foibles be viewed through the most generously forgiving of lenses, is a gimmick that became tiring long ago.
Even worse was AOC’s attempt to paint Scott’s criticism as some sort of sexism.
Scott wasn’t commenting on her hairstyle, physical appearance, clothing style, voice, or anything at all related to her being a woman. He was criticizing a legislative proposal she had promoted.
If you can’t handle people criticizing your bills, then maybe you aren’t tough enough to be in Congress. Is it sexist if I question whether she’s tough enough? Again, I actually think she is plenty tough, and this is just political theater from her, but it has gotten ridiculous seeing her cry sexism every time she’s criticized.
It’s specifically ridiculous regarding Scott to try to claim there’s some sort of inherent sexism in calling a politician “unlikeable.”
Scott famously refused to meet with any of the editorial boards of the newspapers around Florida when he first ran for governor in 2010. They were annoyed by his snub, and all endorsed his opponent. A similar pattern repeated itself for his 2014 reelection campaign and his 2018 campaign for Senate.
Scott’s been repeatedly compared to Voldemort, the villainous wizard from the Harry Potter books and movies, and editorial cartoonists have been savaging him for nearly a decade now. He’s taken it all in stride and it certainly hasn’t stopped him from winning every election in which he’s run.
Once again, I don’t think she’s actually an idiot. She just seems to like playing one on Twitter.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.
Cross-posted at RedState.