Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., campaigns for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the campus of Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Friday, Nov. 8, 2019. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Say what you want about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), but her first year in office shows that she is a far-left progressive who knows what she wants and knows how she intends to get it. But her objective may not be exactly what many of us think it is. New York Magazine recently published an interview with the lawmaker in which she opined on a series of issues.

While AOC is known for her championing of pie-in-the-sky ideas like the Green New Deal, this conversation reveals something about the lawmaker’s agenda of which any opponent of statism should take note. During the interview, she gave a clue telling us of her true intentions.

Ocasio-Cortez indicated that Democratic members of Congress who represent swing districts possess too much power. Indeed, the author of the magazine’s article notes that “The Democratic congressional majority, she told me, is too acquiescent to the demands of its members in so-called red-to-blue districts — those moderates who flipped Republican seats and gave Pelosi the gavel.”

AOC told the interviewer that when she first began her legislative duties, people asked about her agenda. “For so long, when I first got in, people were like, ‘Oh, are you going to basically be a tea party of the left?’” she responded.

She continued:

“And what people don’t realize is that there is a tea party of the left, but it’s on the right edges, the most conservative parts of the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party has a role to play in this problem, and it’s like we’re not allowed to talk about it. We’re not allowed to talk about anything wrong the Democratic Party does.”

The representative then stated that she believes she has “created more room for dissent,” in the party and that “we’re learning to stretch our wings a little bit on the left.”

If that wasn’t enough of a hint as to what AOC — and the group that created her — wants to accomplish, the author notes that she might be pushing for an overall shift to the left for the Democratic Party:

“She said the Congressional Progressive Caucus should start kicking people out if they stray too far from the party line. Other caucuses within the Democratic Party in Congress require applications, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out. But ‘they let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive. There’s no standard,’ she said.”

And what is this party line? It certainly isn’t the establishment Democratic agenda. In fact, the lawmaker claimed that, “Democrats can be too big of a tent.” She then gave her thoughts on Biden, who represents the more moderate version of the party — and who is still the frontrunner in the race for the nomination. The author asked what Ocasio-Cortez believed her “role” would be as a lawmaker under a Biden presidency. According to the author, the lawmaker “groaned,” then responded, “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”

There you have it, dear reader.

Ocasio-Cortez isn’t just here to push extreme statist policies. She and her comrades in The Squad are on a mission to alter the ideological foundation of the Democratic Party. In essence, they are pushing for a political movement that more resembles Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) than Hillary Clinton. In fact, her comments about presidential hopeful Joe Biden reflect a growing movement that wishes to do away with the old party and inch closer to one that embraces Marxist utopianism.

Some might dismiss her as the left’s flavor of the month, but her 15 minutes of fame has lasted for nearly an entire year. If we have learned anything from the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it is this: The socialist crowd is a genuine threat to the more moderate elements on the left. Even worse, they appear to be gaining ground on the battlefield of ideas. Recent polls show that 70% of millennials say they are likely to vote socialist. 36% said they approve of communism.

Allow me to be blunt. If the conservative movement does not start selling liberty and free enterprise more persuasively, the United States will become a socialist country. There is no way around it. The far-left seized control of the nation’s most important institutions and the culture while the right abdicated its position in society. This means the conservative movement and the GOP must finally alter their messaging strategy in a way that allows them to combat the spread of far-left ideology. Otherwise, the nation will become the statist society that the far left envisions.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

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