Sen. Rand Paul has a message for Democrats flirting with socialism: If you’re going to run the experiment, remember who gets stuck inside the laboratory.
“There’s nothing ‘healthy’ about the Democratic Party flirting with socialism,” the Kentucky Republican wrote Friday on X.
Then came the line that really landed.
“Experiments have subjects, and in this one it’s the American people,” Paul wrote. “Socialism has been tried on every continent, and it produced shortages, censorship, and people risking their lives to leave. Young Americans deserve solutions, not a test run of failed policies the world already rejected.”
Paul isn’t alone in raising the alarm.
Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin went after the same subject Thursday on “Washington Watch,” arguing that Americans need a much clearer explanation of what socialist government could eventually mean for their daily lives.
“We’ve got to do a better job of educating people with [what] socialism is,” Grothman said. “People who don’t take time to really look at these things might prefer to be [a] socialist than a capitalist, but socialism really is the end of freedom.”
Now, here’s why Republicans are talking about this right now.
Democratic Socialist-aligned candidates have been winning primaries.
Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America, won her August 17 primary and advanced in the race for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat. Her platform includes a $25 federal minimum wage and Medicare for All.
Over in Colorado, DSA member Melat Kiros won her June primary and is running for the U.S. House in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. Her platform includes universal childcare and an arms embargo.
These aren’t theoretical candidates sitting around a political seminar discussing what might happen someday. They won their primaries. Their names are moving forward to voters.
And Grothman says that should get people’s attention.
“You’re giving up freedom whenever you allow government to grow,” he said. “And the socialists, of course, they want it to grow to cover 100% of all we have.”
His argument is that government expansion doesn’t necessarily arrive in one spectacular burst. It happens piece by piece.
“It’ll be incremental and over time,” Grothman said. “As the socialists get elected, they will take more of your money to determine how to spend it, and they will use the power of government to punish you if you disagree with the major leader.”
Grothman then took that argument from Washington politics right down to the grocery aisle.
“If the government runs the grocery stores, the government decides what you’re able to buy in that grocery store,” he said.
He extended the same argument to employment, warning that under extensive state control of the economy, government could eventually determine who gets hired and whether political loyalty becomes part of that equation.
Those are Grothman’s predictions about where socialism can lead. Democratic Socialists, of course, advocate specific policies within the American electoral system rather than describing their agenda in those terms.
But there’s another wrinkle here, and it involves perhaps the most recognizable democratic socialist in Congress: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Earlier this month, reports revealed that Ocasio-Cortez had rejoined the Democratic Socialists of America after apparently allowing her membership to lapse for roughly seven years.
Yes, seven years.
According to reports from the Manhattan Institute and City & State New York, Ocasio-Cortez had not renewed her membership since 2019. The especially strange part is that DSA apparently didn’t realize it.
In 2020, the organization publicly celebrated her reelection by declaring, “CONGRATULATIONS to DSA member @AOC on officially being re-elected to congress!”
Except, according to the later reporting, she wasn’t actually an active member at the time.
That little membership mystery surfaced after Ocasio-Cortez said during an ABC interview that she belonged to DSA’s New York City chapter but not the national organization. That created a problem because, according to City & State, membership in a local chapter requires membership in the national organization.
So DSA checked.
And with speculation already circulating about Ocasio-Cortez and a possible 2028 presidential campaign, the organization decided this wasn’t merely an administrative question anymore.
“While it is atypical for DSA to address the membership status of individuals, ongoing discussions about the 2028 presidential campaign have prompted this release,” the organization said.
It specifically cited efforts by members and chapters to draft Ocasio-Cortez as a possible presidential primary candidate.
