“House Republicans' refusal to distance themselves from Greene that threatened to haunt the party for the foreseeable future.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene will be the face of the party, the face of the midterms, the face of the extremists.”
– Steve Schmidt, Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project
First of all, despite my distaste for Donald Trump and the recent direction of the Republican Party, I admit I have voted for some Republicans in recent local and state elections. I declare myself an independent who will vote for whom I consider the best candidates regardless of their party affiliation. Having said that, I confess now I strongly support Democratic leaders and their liberal policies.
Since the vast majority of Republicans supported Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – R-Georgia – and did not vote to strip the conspirator of her committee assignments, I find the party, as a whole, spineless and conducive to defending those in their midst who practice violent rhetoric, hate speech, and despicable actions. The lady is unfit for service.
Greene was elected in November to a Georgia congressional seat. After weeks of intense criticism regarding Green's embrace of conspiracy theories about 9/11, school shootings, Jewish laser beams, and Democrats being members of a Satan-worshipping cabal of pedophiles who eat children, her incompetency for office was duly noted.
Green has promoted the QAnon conspiracy, and people combing through her social media history have found bizarre utterances from her past, including her assertion that the Stoneman Douglas massacre was a “false flag” operation, something that is either faked or in which an attacker is pretending to be someone else. Greene also liked a Facebook comment calling for “a bullet to the head” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And a year after the massacre, Greene followed David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student-turned-gun control activist down a sidewalk outside the U.S. Capitol, haranguing him and calling him a “coward” when he ignored her. Greene said of Hogg, "He is very trained. He's like a dog. He's completely trained.” Despicable.
Hogg, the March for Our Lives co-founder, said Greene never apologized to families in Parkland and Las Vegas and Sandy Hook “that have a permanently empty bedroom, that have a permanently empty place at the dinner table.” She didn't attempt to explain, or apologize for, her past support for violence against U.S. political leaders either.
Lately Greene sought to shift attention to what she said are the evils of the news media and technology companies. “Big media companies can take tiny pieces of words that I have said, you have said, any of us, and portray us into someone that we’re not and that is wrong. Cancel culture is a real thing, it is very real,” Greene said, her view that “the media that is just as guilty as QAnon.” She was still argumentative and unapologetic.
The House of Representatives, at the end of seven hours of debate and voting, recorded 11 Republicans who had joined the Democratic majority in stripping Greene from her committee assignments, an indication of the internal divisions consuming the Republican Party. The vote was 230-199 to remove Greene from her committee assignments.
Sworn into her first term less than five weeks ago, Greene has already become the best known member of the House. Republican leaders are betting they can return to political power by cobbling together a coalition featuring both pro-Trump extremists and those who abhor them.
Washington Republicans are unable, or unwilling, to purge far-right radicals from their party, despite some GOP leaders' best wishes.
“I do think as a party, we have to figure out what we stand for,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., warning Republicans to “get away from members dabbling in conspiracy theories."
In the House, Greene remains – a representative to promote bigotry, anti-Semitism and violence against Democrats.
“Kevin McCarthy and his Washington Republican caucus just showed they’re too weak to stand up to the violent QAnon mob that is consuming their party," said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., who leads the House Democrats' campaign arm.
“If they’re too weak to do that,” he added, "they can’t be trusted to get the job done for the American people.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to speak to Greene before the vote in the House. She didn't listen. And, disturbingly, most House Republicans chose to be quiet about her committee assignments. No matter the failed communication or the indifference, the GOP now owns her and her distorted reality. They chose to allow her to represent after repeated warnings about the danger of permitting a loose cannon to espouse dangerous rhetoric against her own fellow lawmakers. Respect = 0.
How Did Greene Get Elected?
Greene ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Georgia's 14th Congressional District. She won in the general election on November 3, 2020. She beat John Cowan, a conservative Republican and local neurosurgeon, in a runoff, and glided into the general election unopposed after her Democratic opponent’s campaign collapsed and he moved out of state. She won with nearly 75 percent of the vote.
The slogan adopted by Dr. Cowan, the Republican who lost to her in the runoff, was “All of the conservative, none of the embarrassment.”
“She is not conservative,” Cowan told Politico before the runoff. “She’s crazy.”
In June 2020, after a Politico investigation resurfaced what it described as "Facebook videos in which Greene expressed racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), and National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) condemned Greene's remarks, with a spokesman for the NRCC saying the Chairman is "personally disgusted by this rhetoric and condemns it in the strongest possible terms."
Greene responded to the criticism in a July 19 debate, saying:
"I think you're aware that if you're a Republican and you are unapologetically conservative like I am, you're going to see people like me called a racist even when it's very unwarranted."
(The Atlanta Press Club, "Congressional Dist. 14 (R) Primary Runoff Debate 2020," July 19, 2020.)
Georgia's 14th Congressional District includes almost all of northwestern Georgia. Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Floyd, Gordon, Haralson, Murray, Paulding, Polk, Walker, Whitfield, and a portion of Pickens counties are included in the district.
The population (2010 census) is 694,398. Race is 85.3% White, 9.8% Black, 0.7% Asian, and 0.4% Native American. Ethnicity is 10.1% Hispanic.
Of the area, Michael E. Bailey, a political science professor at Berry College just outside Rome, the largest city in the district, with 36,000 residents said …
“The default is just absolutely Republican,” said “It isn’t a kind of conservatism rooted simply in lower taxes. It’s more frankly an ornery conservatism, and it’s one that responds to some culture war issues.”
(Rick Rojas. “‘It’s Embarrassing’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Tests the Limits of Some Voters.” The New York Times. February 04, 2021.)
And if there were any doubts of its conservatism, a large billboard greets drivers on Interstate 75: “Every tongue will confess Jesus is Lord — even the Democrats.” (To underline the point, “Democrats” is red and adorned with the devil’s trident.)
Their anger has been stoked by the region’s steady decline. Factories and other industrial facilities have been abandoned. Decent-paying working-class jobs have dried up. Opioid addiction has ravaged families.
Gun rights is a popular issue with her constituents in northwest Georgia, WABE reporter Lisa Hagen, who has been following Greene’s political rise, says that Greene also has such a strong online presence because she often shares ideas that support violence, which “is a common way that people in her circles speak about how to address political issues.”
Hagen explains …
“If you drive around there today, there's still plenty of pro-Trump signs out. You can see the occasional Confederate flag. It is a rural Georgia area with a lot of very conservative and far-right views.”
(Tonya Mosley and Samantha Raphelson.”Who Is Marjorie Taylor Greene? What The Congresswoman's Rise Means For The Future Of The GOP.” WBUR. January 29, 2021.)
Green ran as “a conservative wife, mother of three, and businesswoman in the construction industry who stands with President Trump and against the left-wing socialists who want to wreck our country.”
Greene stated, “I’m running to stop gun control, open borders, the Green New Deal, and socialism.” And her campaign said, “Radical socialists want Americans on the same government-run healthcare plan with welfare recipients and illegal immigrants. Marjorie Greene is fighting against these radical socialists and will take the fight to Congress.”
Marjorie Greene graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Georgia. As of her 2020 campaign, Greene and her husband owned a commercial construction company. Previously, she started and sold a CrossFit gym.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been watching Greene’s social media activity since 2017. Greene is also very calculated about how she reaches those groups of conservatives, recently spending $200,000 advertising on Parler, the now-defunct social media site that was popular among far-right groups. She has also heavily advertised on Telegram and other alternative messaging sites, Hagen says.
Hagen predicts …
“I think we're going to see that Greene, like many of the gun rights activists that I've been studying in the state who she's linked up with, are very, very good at raising money. Where the money is coming from and where it's going is going to be where I'm keeping an eye on in the future.”
(Tonya Mosley and Samantha Raphelson.”Who Is Marjorie Taylor Greene? What The Congresswoman's Rise Means For The Future Of The GOP.” WBUR. January 29, 2021.)
And, still, Green delivers a receptive message to her northwestern Georgia audience. She has introduced articles of impeachment against President Biden, sponsored legislation that would ban Black Lives Matter flags from flying at American embassies and signed onto a bill to “stop the dangerous trend of biological males infiltrating women’s sports.”
Green may now be dead in the water in the House; however, her specter lingers and so does House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy … and so does a deeply flawed, confused, and irresponsible Republican Party. It would have been so easy to support getting rid of this wacky lady and to change course. Instead, it's straight ahead into dangerous waters on a vessel that still feature sailors wearing MAGA hats and hoisting QAnon colors.
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