A Mike Johnson power move can neuter the DSA — and make Democrats pick a side

Both the Democratic Party establishment and the GOP have been flat-footed in their responses to the Democratic Socialists of America and their “Summer of Love.” 

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The Democrats, led by invertebrate castratos like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have mostly ducked when asked about the DSA’s plans to destroy the US Constitution, nationalize 90% of the economy and decapitate our mechanisms of law and order.

They’ve taken cover behind the empty “Big Tent” lie as radical DSA members and allies, like Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and Colorado’s Melat Kiros, triumph in Democratic primaries. 

The GOP, for its part, has been mostly content with name-calling — likening DSAers to such historical villains as Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong — rather than countering them with a clear contrasting set of policy ideas.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has a chance to help both Republicans and moderate Democrats get to a more productive place: When his members return from summer recess on Monday, Johnson can bring to the House floor a privileged Resolution of Disapproval of the socialists’ nihilistic platform and rampant bigotry.     

That would serve an opening for 100 or so moderate House Democrats to declare emancipation from their party’s lobotomized groupthink politburo — the same one that told us then-President Joe Biden was fit for a second term.   

The Democratic brand is already toxic, underwater by 25 percentage points in the latest CNN poll. 

Moderates like New Jersey’s Reps. Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Tom Suozzi (Long Island) and Jared Moskowitz (Fla.) — all members of the self-proclaimed pragmatic New Democrat Coalition caucus — presumably don’t want party leaders marching them off the cliff to a Marxist siren song.  

By forcing an up-or-down vote, Johnson gives them a clear chance at a break they quietly want.

But the resolution would also help the speaker, in two ways. 

First, the floor debate would give Johnson endless B-roll for the midterm elections, as progressive Democrats defend what George Will calls the “Peter Pan sandbox” of socialism. 

Second, and more important, the resolution could separate a large cohort of Democrats who’d be willing to subsequently work with the GOP if the Democrats win back the House in November. 

These moderates — and not the socialists — could then become Capitol Hill’s kingmakers on issues like funding the government, health-care reform and more. 

That possibility alone should make this move irresistible to the speaker.

To work, the Resolution of Disapproval would have to be tightly cast, aiming at the extreme elements of the socialists’ platform (government takeover of increasingly large parts of the economy) and its cultural third-worldism (abolishing prisons, police, borders and even work as we currently know it).

It should also denounce the growing bigotry on the socialist left, from the DSA’s cheering of the genocidal Oct. 7 attack on Jews in Israel to Darializa Avila Chevalier’s revulsion at interracial relationships. 

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That rap sheet is long and growing.  

Johnson is sophisticated enough to know that the socialist progressives — many of them more narcissistic than self-aware — will likely welcome the klieg lights of this debate. 

And Republicans win either way. 

If the moderates vote with the socialists, Johnson has nailed the entire party with the toxic socialist brand.

If all Democrats boycott the vote or abstain, they become the cowards who ran for the hills to protect the socialists.

But if, more likely, the moderates distance themselves from the socialists with their votes, Johnson could leverage them into a new parliamentary coalition with whom he can actively negotiate to retain a working majority on at least some issues, even if he loses the speakership.

And that holds appeal for both the moderate Dems and the GOP, who after all have a clear claim to a mandate: Moderate and conservative voters make up roughly 70% of the American electorate.

A Resolution of Disapproval isn’t some novel maneuver, but a mechanism wielded by both sides.  

In 2019, sparked by Rep. Ilhan Omar’s antisemitic comments, Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi placed a similar resolution on the floor condemning bigotry. 

Johnson did the same in December 2023 after the Oct. 7 attack spawned antisemitic hate, mostly from the left. 

In 1991, President George HW Bush told David Duke and the KKK in no uncertain terms that they had no place in the Republican Party.

Democratic leaders like Jeffries, Schumer and even former President Barack Obama seem to lack the spine to say the same to the extremists and bigots on their side.   

Moderates should unite and shed the Big Tent delusion — because they have nothing to lose but their chains.

Julian Epstein is former chief counsel to the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee and former staff director of the House Oversight Committee. 

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