Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @ SXSW 2019 by nrkbeta, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

In March, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a Washington Post Magazine reporter, “I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

That was then and this is now. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) joined former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who was guest hosting “The Ingraham Angle” on Thursday night, to discuss what happened to change Pelosi’s mind.

Scalise said, “The AOC wing of the party changed and really started controlling her caucus. And so, it’s no longer Nancy Pelosi calling the shots — and you think about anybody who follows in the things that she’s been forced into doing, it’s been mostly the far-left socialist wing of the party and it’s not just Pelosi.”

Scalise explains:

You see AOC shaping the presidential debates on things like the Green New Deal and some of these other lunatic policies, where they’re pushing the presidential candidates so far to the socialist left, that you can’t even recognize them. And so the fact that they’re all kowtowing to that most radical element of their base, instead of [being] focused on the bread-and-butter issues, the things that got them the majority … Most hardworking families are looking, going, ‘What do these people really care about?’ They care about their own power and their hatred against the president — instead of the things that folks at home care about. And frankly that’s why Donald Trump is doing so well. He’s stayed focused on the things that [the American people] care about.

The conversation turned to the 63 Democratic seats lost in the 2010 midterm elections, and Pelosi’s first speakership along with them. She and the other members of the Democratic caucus had veered too far to the left, a scenario which is currently repeating itself. Both Scalise and Chaffetz agree that the Democrats’ obsessive insistence upon impeaching President Trump will hurt them in 2020 and may once again cost Pelosi her speakership.

As it should be. And Nancy Pelosi, who has always been said to be a shrewd political operator, knows it. The fact that she went ahead with impeachment anyway indicates that Scalise is right.

She is no longer calling the shots.