Rep. Boebert Says the Party's 2020-Era Rhetoric 'Was Crazy,' Requests a Do-Over on Behalf of Everyone Who Said It
'Rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today,' the congresswoman explained, laughing, in the tone of a person who did not personally use it
Ink = the flip (fiction). Red = real Republican · Blue = real Democrat.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Boebert, one of the most recognizable voices of her party's insurgent wing, told a Sunday-show audience that the first version of the movement she helped popularize 'was crazy,' laughing along with the host as she recast the party's 2020-era rhetoric as a lockdown-era artifact: 'Rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.' The conversations of that period, she added, 'were quite fruitful' — the fruit apparently being the realization that the conversations should stop.
The remark, borrowed from a local ally's quip, has since been widely interpreted as the clearest signal yet that the party's rising stars intend to seek a mulligan for the things its rising stars said when they were rising — a request The Press's history desk notes has been filed by every American political movement roughly six years after it said the things.
Pressed on which specific positions were the crazy ones, Boebert did not itemize, and critics on both sides have spent the week filling in the blank: opponents by circulating her earlier clips, allies by wondering aloud whether the movement's founding rhetoric can be described as 'crazy' by the person who was in most of the clips.
The Press's revision desk observes that the software-versioning frame — Version 1 was buggy, Version 2 will be stable — is a genuine innovation in political apology, allowing a movement to disown its previous release while retaining its user base, and that both parties are now on at least their third major version, each shipped with the release note 'the last one was crazy.'
Reaction followed the standing choreography. Supporters heard a leader with the maturity to grow past the excesses of a fevered moment. Opponents heard a politician who spent years demanding everyone say the crazy things now demanding credit for noticing they were crazy. The Press archives confirm both parties own the vocabulary — 'evolving' and 'flip-flopping' — and swap it, freshly patched, whenever the other side is the one requesting the update.
Version 1, reached for comment, is still available online, in full, with timestamps.
📜 The Receipts
What actually happened: On ABC's 'This Week,' Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said 'Woke 1 was crazy' (quoting NYC Council Member Chi Ossé), adding that 2020-era 'rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today' and that the conversations 'were quite fruitful' — widely read as a bid to distance her wing from 2020-era positions such as defunding the police; critics asked which policies specifically.