It is far too early to predict if Donald Trump will win a second term in the 2020 election, but one thing is for sure: he has been handed an unwitting campaigner in the unlikely form of Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. Surpassed in nuttiness only by her septuagenarian protégé Bernie Sanders, she supplies the Republicans with campaign material against the Democrats on a daily basis.

A unicorn in every household

Such is the observation of the Wall Street Journal’s editor Kimberly Strassel. She refers to AOC as the Republican’s “secret weapon” for the next election. Republicans merely need to “sit back and watch the 29 year old Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez…exist.”

She is the Millennial embracing the failed economic theory that in the twentieth century sent tens of millions fleeing socialist countries for a better life in free market nations. Says Strassel:

She’s called the American system of wealth creation “immoral” and believes government has a duty to provide “economic security” to people who are “unwilling to work.” As a representative of New York, she’s making California look sensible.

This past week she unveiled her much touted Green New Deal and it was so outrageously nutty that within 24 hours she took the post down, such was the public ridicule. According to her vision, within ten years the U.S. must force all Americans to retrofit their homes for better energy efficiency, abolish air travel, abolish the use of all fossil fuels, convert to 100 percent electric cars with charging stations everywhere, end the raising of livestock for meat (because farting cows create pollution) and a host of other lunacy that the government would presumably dictate.

The scope of such policies is so enormous it would cost tens of trillions of dollars for a nation with a cumulative debt of $19 trillion already. And to enforce such policies would require a virtual communist dictatorship. What country under a representative democracy would agree in a majority decision to enact such insanity? It could only be instituted by dictatorial fiat. This logical conclusion escapes the thinking of AOC and her Millennial peers who embrace socialism. They do not realize, in their zeal for “equality” for all people  and for a Green New Deal, that they will hand over their freedom and human dignity to the demands of an all-powerful state.

It is for starters, a massive plan for the government to take over and micromanage much the economy. Take the central plank, its diktat of producing 100% of U.S. electricity “through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” by 2030. As Ron Bailey at Reason has noted, a 2015 plan from Stanford envisioning the goal called for the installation of 154,000 offshore wind turbines, 335,000 onshore wind turbines, 75 million residential photovoltaic (solar) systems, 2.75 million commercial solar systems, and 46,000 utility-scale solar facilities. AOC has been clear it will be government building all this, not the private sector.

An eye popping price tag

Strassel concludes her article with a discussion of the cost, since AOC neglects any real consideration of it in her plan:

Finally, the resolution is Democratic math at its best. It leaves out a price tag, and is equally vague on what kind of taxes would be needed to cover the cost. But it would run to tens of trillions of dollars. The fact sheet asserts the cost shouldn’t worry anyone, since the Federal Reserve can just “extend credit” to these projects! And “new public banks can be created to extend credit,” too! And Americans will get lots of “shared prosperity” from their “investments.” À la Solyndra.

Above this article is a Cornerstone exclusive photo of Cortez leaving the capitol building on her magical unicorn after she posted plan online. Well, not really, but the picture is no more of a fantasy than the Green New Deal itself.

If there is a flaw in Strassel’s thinking, it would be that the generation that saw the horrors of socialism in the twentieth century is aging out of the culture, and the new generation, of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, never witnessed the miserable failure that is socialism. The generation with the knowledge of socialism’s evil is passing from the scene, while the generation ignorant of it is coming to power.

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