Republican Party Courts Another Problem, and Her Name is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
[guest post by Dana]
Piggybacking on yesterday’s post here, and asking, just how much of a problem does the GOP have? Well, look no further than newly-elected Trump-supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom Trump referred to as “a future Republican star”:
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows.
Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, frequently posted far-right extremist and debunked conspiracy theories on her page, including the baseless QAnon conspiracy which casts former President Donald Trump in an imagined battle against a sinister cabal of Democrats and celebrities who abuse children.
In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the “deep state” working against Trump.
In one Facebook post from April 2018, Greene wrote conspiratorially about the Iran Deal, one of former President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievements. A commenter asked Greene, “Now do we get to hang them ?? Meaning H & O ???,” referring to Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Greene replied, “Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.”
Rep. Greene’s response to inquiries about the report? Well, she didn’t exactly deny them. Rather she accused other people who apparently had access to her social media accounts of posting any number of these posts, and claimed that some of the posts didn’t represent her views. Finally, she suggested that CNN (Fake News) is attempting to cancel her. But of course. This ought to be part of the MAGA pledge: Never assume any responsibility for your own actions:
Fake News CNN is writing yet another hit piece on me focused on my time before running for political office.
I will never back down to the enemy of the American people and neither should you. pic.twitter.com/K3JuvqrDGS
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) January 26, 2021
Rep. Greene is even a disgrace too far for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy:
These comments are deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the Congresswoman about them.
But is a “conversation” enough? Will Leader McCarthy make it plainly clear to her that her views are completely unacceptable and not welcome in the Republican Party?
When McCarthy stripped [Steve] King, then a Republican congressman from Iowa, of his committee assignments in 2019, he signaled he was setting a threshold for the public comments of his caucus members.
King had wondered publicly why terms like “white nationalism” and “white supremacy” had suddenly “become offensive.” [Ed. Who are these people??!!]
Whether Greene’s comments cross the same line remains to be seen.
If they don’t cross the same line, then we will know all we need to know about today’s Republican Party, and the immense influence Trump has had on it. Given there is no chance she will be expelled, without swift and public denouncement of Greene’s comments and even a public rebuke, the GOP will be signaling a lack of seriousness in cleaning their house. At the very least:
Which isn’t to say that Greene should be removed from Congress. While her views are noxious, they were plenty well-known by the voters of Georgia’s 14th district when they chose her as the Republican nominee.
But that doesn’t mean that the Republican Party should actively welcome Greene in their conference by providing her with committee assignments and the other benefits of being affiliated with the Republican Party. Because in so doing, they are condoning these sorts of views as somehow part of the broad spectrum of thought within the GOP.
And that is a very dangerous thing to do — if McCarthy and the rest of Republican leadership wants to have an actual national party going forward. Because a party that allows views like Greene’s to have a seat at the table isn’t one that should be taken seriously.
Meanwhile, Rep. Greene has otherwise been busy doing the people’s um, business:
Greene’s reputation as chief engineer on the Crazy Train was most firmly secured by her hustle in filing an article of impeachment against Joe Biden the day after his inauguration, in which she claimed that he had “abused the power of the Office of the Vice President, enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, by allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits — including financial compensation — from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.”
Convince me that, as it currently stands, the Republican Party is in good health.
–Dana