BY DOMINICK DICARLO | STAFF WRITER
For the second installment of, “my quick thoughts on Democratic 2020 candidates,” we are going to talk about everybody's favorite cool, skateboarding politician from Texas, Robert Francis O’Rourke. He prefers to be called Beto however, because he thinks that by going with an incredibly stupid name, he can connect better with all of us young voters, because we obviously can’t be asked to look at the substance of what O’Rourke brings to the table, but just his personality. Clearly, based on all the fanfare O’Rourke is receiving from our friends in the media, he’s a great candidate, right?
Beto O’Rourke is a joke of a candidate. When O’Rourke announced his run for the Presidency in an edition of Vanity Fair magazine, you just knew who he was trying to appeal to. The only people who even have a subscription to Vanity Fair are women in their 40’s who are still trying to live out their lives as if they are in their 20’s. This man actually announced his intentions to seek the highest office in the land using this sort of nonsense publication! O’Rourke put up a competitive challenge to Senator Ted Cruz last year, but it stands out to me as ignorant to think the politics of a Texas senatorial election will translate well on the national stage. O’Rourke is the one who said we should tear down all the walls on the southern border, which I can imagine does not sit well with the folks in Texas.
Beto told MSNBC, “Yes, absolutely. I'd take the wall down."
Walls work, Democrats pushing for any form of open borders in 2020 will not like what they see from American voters if they continue to push this idea.
This man is a walking joke, yet the media are seemingly doing everything in their power to make him appear as a legitimate contender. This is obviously for a variety of reasons, one of them being that he comes from a red state that President Donald Trump won in 2016. Over the past few days, I have seen countless news stories from mainstream sources praising O’Rourke as a “man of the people” who anyone would wanna sit down and have a beer with. They often speak of his life story, a boy who lost his way after graduating from college, playing in a band, eventually marrying and then finding himself through public service. The problem with all of these stories is that O’Rourke grew up in as lavish a life as one could hope for. He is the son of a powerful Texas Democrat, who had the luxury of majoring in English studies in college, something that screams joblessness to most average Americans.
None of this would be an issue if it wasn’t exactly the opposite of how O’Rourke himself and the media describe him and what his appeal is to voters. This is the sort of nonsense political posturing that voters are usually turned off by. This also doesn’t even begin to go into his countless ethical problems from his earlier career in government, which should make any Democratic voter wary; just look at how questions ethics plagued the 2016 election.
Just like all of the fresh-face Democrats in Congress, O’Rourke is just something that seems new and exciting to the Democratic base. Just like new toys under the Christmas tree become boring after just a few weeks, these new fresh faces of the Democratic party are quickly becoming stale to many Democratic voters, as scandal and controversy continue to follow these politicians wherever they may go.
The rise of a political joke like O’Rourke is a symptom of a greater problem for the Democratic party. The old guard of Democratic politicians are not carrying out the wishes of their voters anymore. For many Democratic voters, they represent an old and outdated way of thinking. The Democratic base is now more liberal in their thinking and often subscribe to more progressive policy prescriptions to combat America’s many problems. The media has painted O’Rourke as a progressive champion similar to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. This image of O’Rourke is blatantly false if you just look at his voting record in Congress. He is closer to a Joe Biden clone than to a “Bernie Bro”, and this image of O’Rourke as a progressive champion is going to wear off very fast, causing him to lose any sort of steam he might garner in the early months leading up to the 2020 Democratic primaries.
The Democratic field in 2020 is already incredibly crowded, so it is going to be extremely difficult for any Democrat to pull away from the rest of the pack. O’Rourke is more of a mainstream Democrat than many of the other 2020 contenders, so his only way to break away from his voting record is going to in how he is being portrayed by the media. There is absolutely no way in my mind that he can actually capture the 2020 Democratic nomination, though his Texas appeal may make him a prime candidate to be named as a Vice Presidential nominee for whichever other candidate wins the nomination.
This man is never going to win the nomination for President, and if he somehow managed to do it, President Trump would undoubtedly wipe the floor with him. The core strength of President Trump is in his ability to market anything, including people. He would quickly label O’Rourke as a small, insignificant political force and would capitalize on his ethical problems and his lack of progressive policy substance. The Democrats would be utterly foolish to nominate him for President, but I sure am hoping they still try and do it anyway.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Liberty Den University or its members.
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