Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Attempt to Go Mainstream Is Over (2024)

In a class of her own. Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Just four years ago, Marjorie Taylor Greene was, to use a technical term, an isolated crank running a doomed congressional campaign in the North Atlanta suburbs, where she had lived for most of her life. She was mainly known for her social-media extremism, having posted everything from lurid QAnon conspiracy theories to support for violence against Democratic leaders to a “Jewish space lasers” explanation for wildfires. Greene was expected to lose badly to former representative Karen Handel in the 2020 Republican primary in the Fourth Congressional District of Georgia.

But then the Republican congressman from a not exactly nearby district in northwest Georgia unexpectedly announced his retirement in December 2019. Within weeks, Greene announced for that 14th District primary, used family money to buy a house in the area, and overwhelmed a large Republican field with a combination of self-funding and hard-core right-wing small-dollar donations. Her ads usually featured her brandishing an assault rifle, and her message expressed her determination to defend northwest Georgia against antifa militants, socialists, and other phantom threats. By the time Greene reached Congress, she was already a national celebrity as a symbol of the extremism her idol, Donald Trump, had made part of the Republican mainstream.

Greene didn’t miss a beat when the Democrats who controlled the House in 2021 stripped her of committee assignments over her newly discovered social-media comments. Freed of any actual work, she devoted herself to MAGA agitprop and fundraising, often in the company of her colleague Matt Gaetz. On multiple occasions, she made a spectacle of herself, refusing to wear a mask on the House floor in defiance of COVID-19 rules, heckling Joe Biden during his addresses to Congress, and getting into regular trouble with outlandish comments on subjects ranging from the Holocaust to Black Lives Matter.

But in 2022 and early 2023, a strange and wondrous thing happened to Greene: House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy won her over, treating her as an adviser and confidante as a way to protect his right flank in a fractious GOP conference. It paid off when she ran interference for him during his agonizing 15-ballot effort to become Speaker, even bringing in Trump to talk to rebellious conservatives. Thus began the short career of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Beltway Insider, punctuated by her ejection from the House Freedom Caucus for her loyalty to McCarthy.

When her old buddy Gaetz took down McCarthy, leading eventually to the elevation of Mike Johnson to the speakership, Greene lost her new and powerful patron. So it’s hardly surprising that she has returned to her earlier role as the wildest card in the congressional deck.

Most recently, Greene has defied the general acceptance of Johnson among hard-core House conservatives as the best of bad options. She has finally managed to get significantly to Trump’s right, pushing to remove Johnson via a motion to vacate the chair even as the 45th president implicitly gave the Louisianan permission to pass a bipartisan foreign-aid package.

This week, NBC News interviewed a long list of notorious House wingnuts, and without exception, they all said Greene is barking up the wrong tree:

“I oppose a motion to vacate at the current time,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who led the “motion to vacate” that ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker and has been critical of Johnson, R-La. …

“I’m not hearing a lot of critical mass for it,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who added that he doesn’t expect the motion to come to the floor. “I’m not hearing any chatter.”

Asked if he’d vote to remove Johnson as he did McCarthy, Biggs told reporters on Monday: “I won’t answer a hypothetical. What I’ve said is: It’s not the time. Although I’m profoundly frustrated, disappointed and disgruntled, it’s not the time.”

Numerous conservative lawmakers who have blasted the recent Johnson-blessed spending bills and foreign aid package said as the House returned from a weeklong recess that they aren’t ready to support Greene’s push to remove Johnson. They cited a number of reasons: They worry it would disrupt GOP unity ahead of the election, they fear there isn’t a better replacement, they believe it’d fail due to a thinning majority, and some say the time isn’t right.

Greene is still theoretically on Trump’s list of vice-presidential prospects and may rank ahead of confessed puppy killer Kristi Noem — but nobody seriously thinks he would harness himself to this loosest of cannons.

So Greene is back where she started not that long ago: as a crackpot from the fever swamps who would be totally obscure without her knack for dumb and terrifying utterances.

Tags:

• politics
• early and often
• mtg
• donald trump
• mike johnson
• kevin mccarthy
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