GOP Sen. Perdue says he would fly AOC to Georgia to campaign for his Democratic opponent

Socialism doesn't play well politically in the South — something Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue is banking on in his Senate runoff campaign against Democrat Jon Ossoff.

In fact, Perdue is so sure of it that he said he would fly democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to the state to campaign for Ossoff, NBC News reported.

Socialism kills (Democratic campaigns)

Democrats expected to increase their lead in the U.S. House and believed they could flip control of the U.S. Senate in the 2020 election, and they had their eyes set on taking over multiple state legislatures.

But they failed — bigly. And Democrats' ties to socialism were seen by party leaders and insiders to be a major reason.

Intra-party postmortem discussions about what happened in the 2020 congressional elections became a source of tension among party members, with accusations for Democrats' ballot-box failures being leveled at anti-police socialists like Ocasio-Cortez and "The Squad." One Democratic lawmaker warned, "We have to commit to not saying the words 'defund the police' ever again. We need to not ever use the words socialist or socialism ever again," and, "If we run this race again, we will get f***ing torn apart again in 2022."

Ocasio-Cortez naturally took exception to those claims and instead blamed the party's losses on GOP smears connecting Democrats to socialism and "defund the police" movements and on moderate Democrats' poor campaigning efforts that allowed Republican charges to stick.

Invitation to AOC

Sen. Perdue understands that socialism was a campaign killer for Democrats in 2020 — from congressional races to former Vice President Joe Biden's failure in Florida — and he's doing everything he can to tie Ossoff to the ideology.

In an interview with Mike Huckabee last week, Perdue said the "main difference" between him and Ossoff was "simple" to understand: Ossoff is a "socialist."

And now Perdue has stepped up the game by working to connect Ossoff to Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow travelers.

According to NBC News reporter Alex Seitz-Wald, Perdue said during a campaign stop Monday that he is hoping Ocasio-Cortez will come to Georgia. In fact, he's willing to foot the bill for a plane ticket to get the democratic socialist to the Peach State and on Ossoff's trail forthwith.

"She's going go be down here. I'm going to buy her a ticket!" Perdue said, the Daily Caller reported. "I want her to come down to Georgia. We'll have that debate."