Yeah, that's something I've noticed. Venezuela is pretty much what a Republican politician pictures when hearing the word "socialism".

And in a related note, I have the feeling that, once the Chavistas are kicked out, socialism as an ideology will never recover. People will probably relate that word with Chávez, and it doesn't help that, of the myriad of centrist and leftist groups opposed to Maduro (despite what the Government says, most of the Opposition parties are either on the center or center-left), the biggest and most important ones are either historically corrupt or incompetent.

The best example of this is Acción Democrática (Democratic Action, AD), in theory social-democratic. Once the biggest party in the country, it alternated in power with centrist COPEI in a de facto two party system for almost 40 years, from the 1950's until 1994. After a good start, with President Rómulo Betancourt pretty much establishing a democracy from the ground-up, it became a corrupt mess, rigging elections, taking public funds, and the like. President Carlos Andrés Pérez (in his second mandate, the first one wasn't so bad) pretty much doubled down on this, embracing neoliberal policies during an economic crisis in the late 1980's, the exact opposite of the thing he was elected for. After bloody riots in 1989, where he ordered the security forces to fire on protesters, and two coup attempts against him (one of them led by Chávez), he was swiftly impeached and kicked out of office, the party being completely discredited. Now, even if the party is still a significant force, with some of its leaders having important positions in the National Assembly and the Opposition coalition, it still carries a huge stigma with a large part of the population. Lots of my family members were supporters of AD, and they switched to Chávez when he came along. Some of them, like my grandfather, are still Chavistas, and resent them to this day.