Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
In other words, she offers an entirely different model of dissent from a party’s ideological mainstream, and strong
conservatives could do a lot worse than watch and emulate her. She has already shown quite a bit of skill at using her seat in the House to advocate for substantive change.
What’s important is that she’s used her hearing opportunities substantively, to advocate for her policy preferences and not for playing gotcha with witnesses.
I’ve said many times that the problem isn’t how conservative Republicans are, but how they approach institutions, how they fail to respect democratic norms, and how they seem obsessed with constantly proving their ideological bona fides rather than actually trying to get anything done.
AOC's problem, which is common to Democrats, is although she proposes change, most of what she proposes is pie in the sky and is not very practical; cost effective, The Republicans think more in terms of being practical, since in the end, this is what can be accomplished in a cost effective way that does not create new problems. The Freedom Caucus takes this one step further and also wants change to be up to code; Constitutional. The Democrats will often try to skip the inspection process and ignore the latest building codes. Pelosi said, you can read Obamacare after you sign it. The skipped codes will be noticed after it is done.
In many ways the relationship between the Democrat and Republican parties, are the Democrats is like the wife and the Republican is the husband. The dynamics is like that of a married couple. This current couple is very dysfunctional.
As an analogy, the Democrat; wife decides it would be nice to expand the kitchen toward the garden by knocking out the outside wall. This vision of the kitchen is nice, since it would bring in more light and give more space. The Republican; husband, thinks in terms of practical. A kitchen expansion would be nice, but the outside wall, that she wants to knock out, is supporting the side of the house, all the way to the roof. This is not an easy or a cheap retrofit and if it is done wrong, it could impact the entire house.
AOC; wife, hears the constructive criticism, with one ear, not as practical thinking, but as partisan politics; power play. To her the husband is wanting to control everything. So, she decides to show her husband, he is wrong, and starts knocking out the outside wall, while the husband is at work.
ObamaCare worked this way. It was sold as being cheaper for everyone and everyone could keep their doctor. This was the image of the sunny kitchen expansion, overlooking the garden. All the wives in the neighborhood like the image. The Democrats knocked out the outside wall; disrupted the free market solution that was in place for 80%, causing problems. This has resulted in large cost increases they did not see, since they don't think in practical terms. Now the husband; Republicans, are left with the task of retrofitting the sagging house, to save the house from further collapse. At the same time, they are being nagged at, for the support header, blocking some of the sun.
AOC presents the green deal as the sunny kitchen overlooking the garden, and if she and the Democrats could implement this, the sunny kitchen expansion would be a disaster. It requires getting rid of things; fossil fuels, that do not yet to have a suitable practical replacement. This disaster would be reflected in the next voting cycle, as the Republican take control again. Then it would be the job of the Republicans to fix the mess, while the Democrats do nothing but gossip and nag.
Trump is different in that he is resigned to the fact, that his wife has visions, and she will try to get her way in the end, even if she has to do it herself and mess things up. Then it will become his mess to retrofit, since he has the practical skills. Trump, approaches this dynamics proactively, and comes up with practical solutions, up front, before the wife gets the sledge hammer. It is easy to build from scratch then retrofit.
For example, Trump is not afraid to address social issues that are not normally associated with the Republicans. He gets ahead of the wife, and does this on practical terms; paid family leave and a solution for DACA. The wife should be happy, her dreams are being satisfied, but she instead she only want to nag and complain, and then double down with even worse impracticality, so she feel she is leading.
In many ways, social changes, thanks to the Democrats, have messed up husband-wife dynamics in culture; conflict and divorce from irreconcilable differences. This is reflected in Government.
-