Republicans Are in Trouble when Marjorie Taylor Greene Looks Sane
American Democracy Was Not Meant to Allow the Tyranny of a Tiny Minority
She has supported QAnon conspiracy theories; accused the entire Democratic Party of supporting pedophilia; claimed Hillary Clinton had JFK, Jr., killed; insisted a plot is afoot to turn everyone gay or trans; suggested that some mass shootings were staged by supporters of gun control; promoted antisemitism by saying that California wildfires were started by a laser beamed from space that was controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family; and confused the Gestapo with gazpacho.
Those are just some of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s, R-Ga., “greatest hits.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnnell has said MTG’s “loony lies” are a “cancer” on the GOP, and the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, a Trump ally, has called some of her comments “atrocious.” Even though MTG walked back some of those “loony lies,” the House revoked her committee assignments a few weeks after she took her seat in Congress in 2021.
However, with the House descending into circus-like chaos (my apologies to circuses — they are less crazy than this clown show on Capitol Hill), MTG has almost been a voice of reason, abandoning her fellow rabble rousers on the extreme right and standing firmly behind House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker.
"If the base only understood that 19 Republicans voting against McCarthy are playing Russian roulette with our hard earned Republican majority right now," Greene wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.
I hate to use the words “she’s right” when referring to MTG, but she is.
As I wrote the day after the November midterms, the GOP snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because of its slavish pandering to the election-denier base of the party and its support for candidates that few moderates could support.
Now, about 20 Republicans have turned into hostage takers, paralyzing the ability of Congress to govern, for little apparent reason other than causing chaos and gaining notoriety.
In the process, they are doing a phenomenal job of hurting the GOP and squandering the slim majority Republicans have in Congress.
This fringe of the fringe — they represent a minority of a minority of Republicans who are believed to be members of the Freedom Caucus — are even ignoring their heroes, former President Trump and Sean Hannity, who have told them to fall into line and vote for McCarthy.
Also, don’t believe commentators on the left who quote Robert F. Kennedy and seem to enjoy that “democracy is messy,” or Tucker Carlson when he tells you that “This is a little chaotic, but this is what it’s supposed to be.”
Democracy is messy but it should not be this messy.
And democracy is not supposed to be a tyranny of the minority.
Less than 5% of all representatives are holding up the proper functioning of Congress and the U.S. government as a whole.
If you look at the really intransigent Republicans, the firebrands who swore not to support McCarthy, they constitute less than 2% of the lower chamber, maybe even less than 1%.
The “Never McCarthy” folks have quite the leaders: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who faced a Justice Department investigation into whether he violated sex-trafficking laws (prosecutors ended up declining to bring charges because of credibility issues with witnesses), and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a gaffe-machine who is one of the ruder and more partisan members of Congress (even MTG has spoken out against her pal Boebert for the “drama” over the speaker election).
Separately, Democrats owe nothing to Republicans, but they too were elected to govern. They could solve the problem by either throwing some votes to McCarthy or simply having some members not show up for a vote, so that McCarthy’s current vote total would be sufficient to elect him speaker. Don’t hold your breath.
I hope that the House will have elected a speaker by the time you read this, but damage has already been done to the already pathetically low approval rate of Congress.
That’s especially true of the GOP, which will need to hope that Americans have a short memory and that they forget this crisis when a new one arises.
If not, they may need to rely on the sanity and leadership of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
That’s scary.
Cover photo: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.) speaks at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix on Dec. 19, 2021. (Gage Skidmore/ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 2.0))
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Indeed. You have a point, Mr. Mora.
Indeed. You have a point, Mr. Mora.