Sen. Jon Ossoff presents himself as a typical Democrat out on the campaign trail, but his Republican opponent and some political analysts say he’s closer to a Democratic Socialists of America dream candidate.
Since being elected in 2021, Ossoff has sided with the democratic socialists in more ways than one, threatening to undermine the very core of America’s republic. At least, that’s the view coming out of the Mike Collins for Senate campaign.
“The call is coming from inside the house, and Jon Ossoff and the Democrat Socialists of America are looking to destroy our country from the inside out,” Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Georgia, said Tuesday in a press release. “Jon Ossoff is a reliable vote for a socialist economy, opening up jails, and abolishing the Supreme Court.”
On many issues, Ossoff’s record would appear to support Collins’ claims.
One of the platforms that the democratic socialists pride themselves on is their radical anti-law-and-order agenda. On their website, the DSA calls for defunding the police, “freedom for all incarcerated people,” and ending “colonial policing of our cities and neighborhoods.”
During his run for Senate in 2020, Ossoff said he would “reverse the militarization of local police forces … ban private prisons, end cash bail, reform prisons and raise conditions of incarceration to humane standards, abolish the death penalty, legalize cannabis and end incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses,” WALB 10 News reported.
According to the DSA website, the goal of their members is to “end qualified immunity and empower civilian oversight bodies with real authority over the police.”
On abortion, Ossoff appears to embrace the same policy goals as democratic socialists. Ossoff voted for Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022, proposed legislation that would have lifted restrictions on abortion.
The legislation said government cannot hinder or interfere with a doctor’s ability to assist with abortion services via telemedicine. It also stated that government cannot require women to visit doctors in person before receiving abortion services if deemed “medically unnecessary.”
Ossoff’s vote to promote abortion and limit restrictions ties in with the democratic socialists’ claim that bodily autonomy and intimate life can be “oppressed” through legislation, including “patriarchal restrictions on abortion.”
On transgender biological male students partaking in women’s sports, Ossoff voted against legislation aimed at keeping such students out of women’s sports.
Specifically, the bill would keep school athletic programs from allowing men to compete in women’s sports, regardless of the gender they identify with. It goes on to say that federally funded education programs or activities cannot “operate, sponsor, or facilitate athletic programs or activities that allow individuals of the male sex to participate in programs or activities that are designated for women or girls.”
Ossoff and others who opposed the bill align with the DSA’s agenda of emphasizing “trans rights”. According to the DSA website, the group’s Trans Rights & Bodily Autonomy Campaign Commission is the nation’s biggest center for “grassroots trans rights organizing.”
Dr. Kerwin Swint, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University, told the Daily Signal that DSA candidates and policy positions are “far more radical.”
“They call for actually dismantling the democratic institutions that undergird our entire society. And they do so openly and proudly. It’s quite amazing. And many Democratic Party officials and candidates are embracing it,” Swint said.
He added that the “Democratic Party is at war with itself,” and that Ossoff “is running as a moderate, and of course would like to be seen that way, but of course his voting record for Biden-era initiatives belies that completely.”
Swint said top Democratic Party leaders in Congress “know that it is political suicide to support these radical positions,” and that Democrats running for office this year should be asked about their position on the socialists’ far-Left ideas, “because they go way beyond anything most Americans could support.”
“Jon Ossoff has been a very loyal Democrat in the U.S. Senate. He has voted in lockstep with Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Raphael Warnock,” Swint added. “He wants to get re-elected, so I’m sure he will dismiss any notion that he supports DSA positions or policies. But I doubt he would condemn them either.”
“He wants to be able to keep raising money from the political left, so he will walk that line,” he added.
The Jon Ossoff campaign did not return the Daily Signal’s request for comment.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
