House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is either rusty with her arithmetic or in full-blown denial — there are more than just five radicals in the Democratic Party.
During a recent interview, Pelosi scoffed at the idea that her party is sliding further to the left, arguing that there are only a handful of socialists in her caucus.
“By and large, whatever orientation [the Democrats] came to Congress with, they know that we have to hold the center, that we have to go down the mainstream,” she said. When asked if the Democrat Party has become fractured, Pelosi acknowledged that “you have these wings — AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and her group on one side,” but contended that the socialist faction only consists of “like five people.”
It doesn’t take a PhD in mathematics to realize that Pelosi’s estimate is far off the mark.
While many Democrats don’t openly identify themselves as “socialists,” dozens of them openly support various outrageous socialist proposals pitched by the most radical politicians in Washington.
Just take a look at AOC’s Green New Deal, which estimates show will cost American taxpayers a jaw-dropping $93 trillion. Although the proposal did not get much traction last year, 91 House members have backed the “green dream” as of late March, as have several leading Democratic presidential candidates. In fact, support for the Green New Deal has nearly tripled since December — a clear sign that the radical wing of the Democratic Party is rapidly gaining influence.
Echoing AOC’s own hyperbolic perspective, Sen. Cory “Spartacus” Booker has even compared the Green New Deal with fighting Nazis, arguing that America must take the lead on combating climate change no matter how much it might cost.
“Our planet is in peril, and we need to be bold,” the lawmaker said earlier this year. “There’s a lot of people blowing back on the Green New Deal. They’re going, ‘Oh, it’s impractical, oh it’s too expensive, oh it’s all of this.”
“When the planet has been in peril in the past, who came forward to save the Earth from the scourge of Nazi and totalitarian regimes? We came forward,” he declared.
Whether Pelosi likes it or not, the neo-socialists have fully infiltrated the Democratic Party, particularly within her House majority. Some leading Democratic presidential candidates are now even endorsing the concept of reparations — an unhinged leap to the left that would fundamentally divide our country, as even Barack Obama recognized.
Just last month, in fact, democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders boasted that many of the “radical and extreme” ideas he touted during the 2016 presidential campaign have now become mainstream within the Democratic Party.
No matter how much Pelosi denies the fact, radicalism is now embraced and adopted by more than just a handful of Democrats in Congress — and the speaker knows it. Unfortunately for Pelosi, neither denial nor optimistic arithmetic will save the Democratic Party from plunging headlong into socialist oblivion.
Harlan Hill is president of the Logan Circle Group and an advisory board member for the Trump-Pence 2020 re-election campaign.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.