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Socialists in Congress and the Oath of Office: Jim Pfaff on On Second Thought | Aug 21, 2026

Published: August 21, 2026
Network: WHKY
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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A week of primaries produced wins for a number of Democratic Socialists of America candidates, including one in Florida that got a lot of notice. On the August 21, 2026 edition of On Second Thought on WHKY, host Chuck Boozer opened with those results, and Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff turned to what happens if those candidates are elected. Pfaff’s answer was the one he says he has stated forcefully and regularly: a House Republican majority should refuse to seat them. His case for keeping socialists in Congress out of their seats rests on two things — the constitutional provision that lets Congress determine its own membership, and the wording of the oath of office itself. The segment then turned to Royce White’s declaration for the WNBA draft and to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s move back to the United Kingdom.

Topics Covered

• Where the DSA Won: Florida, Colorado, New York City, Michigan
• The 1984 Indiana Precedent: 172 Votes and a Seat Denied
• The Oath of Office and Socialists in Congress
• Two Motivations: Socialism and Sharia Law
• Royce White, the WNBA, and Rules Applied Consistently
• Harry, Meghan, and the West’s Discarded Standards
• Key Takeaways

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Where the DSA Won: Florida, Colorado, New York City, Michigan

Boozer opened the segment with the week’s results: a couple of socialists winning primaries across America, including one down in Florida that got a lot of notice. Pfaff called it an interesting trend and said he has talked quite extensively about it, because the problem is not the primary result. It is what comes next.

“I think that we’re really at a place where we have to entirely push back on these people, many of whom are going to end up getting elected.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He was careful about the scale of it. This is not a national wave. It is a set of districts where the outcome was foreseeable, plus one that was not.

“Now, the good news is it’s not nationwide right now.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The 1984 Indiana Precedent: 172 Votes and a Seat Denied

Pfaff’s remedy is the one he has stated forcefully and regularly, and he restated it on WHKY without softening it:

“Republicans, if they keep the House, they need to not seat anybody who has claimed to be a DSA member.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The immediate objection is that refusing to seat an elected member is unheard of. Pfaff said it is not without precedent, and he gave two kinds. After the Civil War, men who had been insurrectionists on the southern side were elected and were not seated. And there is a much more recent case, from a district Pfaff knows firsthand — Indiana’s 8th Congressional District, where his house is. What was done there is exactly the mechanism he wants used against socialists in Congress.

In 1984, Republican Rick McIntyre ran against Democrat Frank McCloskey. The Indiana Secretary of State certified the results, and the certified margin Pfaff cited was 172 votes for McIntyre. House Democrats then conducted their own review of the race and decided not to seat McIntyre despite that certification. McCloskey held the seat until John Hostettler beat him roughly ten years later. Pfaff drew the comparison directly, harkening back to Donald Trump asking in 2020 for elections to be verified: in 1984 it was Democrats who did their own effort at recounting and set aside a state’s certified winner.

The authority behind that 1984 decision is the authority Pfaff wants used now. He flagged that he was paraphrasing rather than quoting the text:

“The point is that the Constitution says that the Congress can determine its membership. I’m not giving the precise words, but they are able to determine their membership.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The Oath of Office and Socialists in Congress

The precedent establishes that the House can do it. Pfaff’s argument for why it should do it comes from the oath. His point is that the DSA contingent inside the Democrat Party has not asked for constitutional amendments to change the structure of American government. They have said, in their platform, that they intend to assert authority to get rid of the Senate, to make the executive branch subject to the U.S. House of Representatives, and to do the same to the judicial branch.

That is what collides with the oath. The oath requires defending the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, and it is taken without purpose of evasion — a phrase Pfaff pulled out because it does the work here.

“They cannot take the oath of office properly, because the oath of office says that you’ll defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The evasion is not hidden or inferred, Pfaff said. It has been stated quite publicly, and it is written into a platform. That is why he treats the seating question as a stand that has to be made rather than a procedural preference, an argument TCC laid out in full in our earlier report on the oath of office showdown over DSA socialists in Congress.

“I don’t think that we can countenance people who intend to undermine the Constitution serving as an elected representative.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff then qualified his own alarm. Is this a total threat to the country at this moment? His answer was no — not precisely a threat, not yet. It becomes one if these people gain political power, and gaining political power for the ends they have stated is the entire purpose of the project. That is the sequence he wants interrupted at the seating stage.

Pfaff granted that the country already fails to follow the Constitution — it is bad enough, he said, that Republicans and Democrats alike ignore it in the way they spend money — and then drew the distinction that separates negligence from intent:

“That’s bad enough. That’s neglectful. These people literally want to eviscerate the Constitution and create a different country than the one we have.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Two Motivations: Socialism and Sharia Law

Boozer asked why people who come to the United States would want to change it, recalling a South Charlotte neighborhood 25 or 30 years ago where the parties turned into complaints that this was not New Jersey.

Pfaff separated the answer into two motivations behind the socialists in Congress he wants kept out of their seats. The primary stated motivation is straightforward and requires no interpretation: they are socialists, and they believe America should be a socialist country — communist, in his words. The secondary motivation applies to some of them, not all.

“Some of them are Islamic in their background and their beliefs, and they want to institute Sharia law.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He pointed listeners to Raymond Ibrahim, whose work on the historical pattern of Islamic conquest and the subjection of countries to Islamic rule and law Pfaff said everyone should hear. And he kept the claim narrow, applying it to a subset with a stated objective rather than to the whole field:

“There are people in this cadre, some of them, who literally have that as their stated objective. And that is just antithetical to the American system.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Royce White, the WNBA, and Rules Applied Consistently

After the break, Boozer moved to Royce White, who has declared officially for the WNBA draft on the grounds that he meets all the requirements to apply — his line, as Boozer read it, was that if all you have to do is feel like a woman, he felt like a woman when he filled out the application. Pfaff noted that Enes Kanter did not make the feelings claim at all. He read the rules as written and said that is what we are going to do.

Pfaff’s interest is not the athletes. It is what the challenge reveals about the league’s officiating.

“It shows the WNBA for what it has become, which is a useless, feckless organization that can’t even keep the rules straight on the court.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

His comparison was the NBA of the 1980s and 1990s, which he called one of the great heydays of the league — the Bad Boys of the Detroit Pistons under Isiah Thomas, the rough play between the Celtics and the Lakers. That basketball was hard and strong, and it worked because there was a clear set of rules that everyone knew and that was consistently applied. When players were too tough, they got called for the foul.

In the WNBA, the enforcement gap runs the other way. Pfaff described players carrying vendettas against opponents they hate, particularly against Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever, doing things that should get them thrown out of the game — or drawing no call at all. His verdict was about the officials as much as the players:

“So anyway, this just shows the entire inconsistency of the WNBA.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He was fair to the league on the business: it is doing pretty well in terms of increasing viewership. His objection is to the label. Let’s not call it basketball, he said — let’s just call it UFC. And he thinks Enes Kanter and the athletes doing this should be able to play, because that is what the rules show. He called it appropriate justice, not a flippant stunt.

Harry, Meghan, and the West’s Discarded Standards

The last segment was Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moving back to the UK, six years after leaving formal royal duties in 2020. Pfaff ran through the finances: the multi-million dollar reality TV deal that bombed, and no royal privileges, including a stipend that was probably pretty sizable. His guess, stated as a guess, is that they need money.

He credited the honest part. They are stating they want their kids in school, and King Charles had a cancer diagnosis and Harry wants to be close to his father. That part, Pfaff said, is probably pretty honest and may even be the substance and core of it. Boozer added the timing detail: the children were enrolled months ago and start school next week, so this was not a sudden decision.

What he would not credit is the culture the story sits inside. Pfaff’s argument is that the West has been discarding the standards that made self-government possible, and he made it without requiring anyone to share his faith:

“If you don’t believe in God, the Ten Commandments are still really good, because when you’re not murdering and committing adultery and stealing, that’s a pretty good culture where people are self-governed in that way. And we’re throwing all that away.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Great Britain has gone the furthest with it, he said, and the people are suffering under changes made by people in positions of power and authority. On the couple themselves, he noted South Park’s lampooning of their privacy tour — public events everywhere while making a big deal about wanting privacy. He said Queen Elizabeth was negative about the marriage at the time and was right to be, calling her maybe the very last of the honorable aspects of the royal family, with Charles now breaking a few things down too.

“It has always been good to have respect and honor and the fear of God, frankly, in our public institutions, particularly our political ones.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That is a strengthening thing for a society, he said. It is not perfect and it has its negatives, but it is far superior to what we are going through right now. It is the same concern that runs through his argument about socialists in Congress: institutions hold when the people inside them are bound by standards they did not write themselves.

Key Takeaways

1. Don’t seat socialists in Congress – Pfaff’s position is that if Republicans keep the House, they need to not seat anybody who has claimed to be a DSA member. He has stated it forcefully and regularly, and he restated it here without qualification.
2. The 1984 Indiana case is the precedent – By Pfaff’s account, the Indiana Secretary of State certified Rick McIntyre the winner over Frank McCloskey by 172 votes in Indiana’s 8th District. House Democrats ran their own review and refused to seat him. McCloskey held the seat until John Hostettler beat him about ten years later.
3. Congress judges its own membership – The constitutional authority Democrats used in 1984 is the same authority Pfaff wants a Republican House to use now. He was explicit that he was paraphrasing the text, not quoting it.
4. The oath is the disqualifier – The oath requires defending the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic and is taken without purpose of evasion. A platform calling for abolishing the Senate and subordinating the executive and judicial branches to the House is that evasion, stated publicly.
5. Not nationwide, not yet a threat – Pfaff limited both claims. The wins are confined to Colorado’s 1st District, three New York City districts, Michigan, and Florida. It is not precisely a threat now, but it becomes one if these people gain political power.
6. One standard across all three segments – Rules that everyone knows and that are consistently applied made 1980s NBA basketball work. Their absence is what Pfaff sees in the WNBA, in a royal family shedding its standards, and in a House asked to seat members who reject its charter.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Aug 21, 2026 on WHKY’s On Second Thought.