I never will understand the conservative obsession with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's a first-term congresscritter from New York City. She's bright, but they keep trying to make the case that she's stupid, and she keeps feeding them into the social-media woodchipper. And then they decide to heckle her and forget that she was an NYC bartender and, as such, she has the clapback instincts of a rake that gets stepped on. And now, formerly Very Important People are getting into the act. From Business Insider:

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan offered some advice to freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she arrived in Washington earlier this year, but she wasn't interested in his guidance, Ryan said on Tuesday night. "I don't think she really listened to a thing I said, you know, 'just take it easy, just watch things for a while,'" the Wisconsin Republican said at an annual dinner in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, according to the GazetteXtra, a local news outlet in the town.

First of all, the zombie-eyed granny starver is the deadest letter in American politics right now. He is reckoned even by his own party to be the worst Speaker of the House in living memory, albeit for different reasons than the ones that drove Democrats to the identical conclusion. Second, he was elected at 28 and immediately started promulgating his truthless economic policies all over Washington until he developed a completely unmerited reputation as an economic wunderkind. And third, just shut up. You scarpered on the Speakership because you saw minority status coming at you like a freight train.

You may not like the way AOC does her job, but at least she's in there doing it. Why she should give you the time of day is a mystery beyond my ken.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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