"It’s ugly and getting uglier," House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Thursday, commenting on the row between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
There are no moderates left in the Democrat Party, and liberal Pelosi is losing the battle with socialists like Ocasio-Cortez, Scalise told Fox News:
"It's ugly and getting uglier. You are seeing this fight between the far-left socialists and liberals. It used to be, in the Democrat Party, a fight between liberals and moderates. There are no moderates left.
"It's, literally, liberals versus socialists and the socialists are winning.
"But, for Nancy Pelosi to think that she can silence AOC and these other far-left socialists just shows that she's out of touch with what’s happening in her own conference. And that, I think, is shocking a lot of people, because she used to control with an iron fist."
Scalise said he thinks Pelosi is so out of touch that she has no idea how powerful far-left socialists have become in her party:
"Yea, I think she is completely misreading just how much of a grip these far-left socialist have on her conference.
"Look, AOC is threatening some of the liberals that she is going to run somebody in their primary if they vote for mainstream policies. I mean a lot of them ran saying they were going to be pro-life, pro-gun and anti-Pelosi. And they're all voting to allow a baby to be murdered after it's born alive. They’re voting to raise taxes. They're voting to take away your gun rights and they're voting down the line with Nancy Pelosi.
"And, yet, that’s not enough for AOC and the socialists. They're having this internal struggle. It’s starting to play out publicly. But, it just shows you, you know: they ran and Pelosi took the gavel trying to think that she could appeal to Middle America. And, Middle America is looking at this going, 'Wait a minute, we are not a socialist nation. We are still a center right nation.'"