Republicans Have Been Crying ‘Socialist’ at Conventions for 60 Years
Socialism—it’s a convention tradition for the GOP.
References to the economic philosophy of government ownership were only slightly outnumbered by the words “the” and “Trump” on the first night of the remote-access GOP summit on Monday. Ex-United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley warned of the nefarious influence “the socialist left” would have on former Vice President Joseph Biden’s prospective administration, while Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) imagined the Democratic nominee and his understudy Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) would look to implement a “socialist utopia.” The first son’s significant other, Kimberly Guilfoyle, inveighed against a “socialist Biden-Harris future,” while Florida businessman Maximo Alvarez warned that Democrats wanted Americans to “trust a socialist state more than your family.”
No doubt, socialism is at something of a high-water mark in recent history: Self-identified socialists currently hold four of 535 voting seats in the House of Representatives and Senate. But as the red tide has ebbed and flowed along the Potomac over the past 15 presidential election cycles, exhortations at the GOP convention about the Democrats’ purportedly far-left inclinations have rarely abated.
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