Marjorie Taylor Greene could end up expelled after all
To paraphrase Gore Vidal, the three most dispiriting words in the English language are Marjorie Taylor Greene. That, anyway, is the tamest adjective I can think of to describe her. Some are more to the point but less printable. In any case, I’m as tired of her as you are, and have steadfastly resisted writing too much about her. When you’re dealing with the Congressional equivalent of Alex Jones you don’t want to give her the very thing she craves the most: attention.
But that’s not the only thing she craves. I think she craves the presidency, and sees her even-more-outré-than-Trump demeanor as a fast track to that end. In her simplistic mind, outrage will generate headlines which will generate popularity among the growing disaffected which will generate votes. If Trump could do it, her reasoning goes, so can she. What she doesn’t get is the other side of the method in her madness is the madness in her method. It just won’t work.
Greene may think she’s the new Trump but what she doesn’t get is she’s barking up the wrong political tree. Republicans aren’t going to elect a woman president, period, particularly not a woman as stupid and as toxic as she is. The idea that more is better only works so far. Republican fringe groups aren’t looking for another Trump, they’re looking for Trump. He’s going to have to die before they will even consider someone else, and whoever that someone else is, it won’t be a woman and hence it won’t be Greene. The lunatic Republican fringe hates women and Marjorie Taylor Greene won’t be getting around that, not in this life.
Meanwhile Greene is making a perfect ass of herself with her most juvenile trick to date, the equivalent of pulling the fire alarm and running away snickering. I’m referring, of course, to her deliberately malicious stunt of repeatedly forcing the House into a vote to adjourn. Any member of the House of Representatives can call for such a vote, which requires all members to drop whatever they’re doing at the time and report to the House chamber to cast their vote. Her weaponizing House procedures is making her enemies.
Democrats already got her kicked off her committees, so this is part of her revenge on them. But it’s pissing everyone off, and not just Democrats. Republicans are beginning to grumble about her too. Greene doesn’t care. She even framed her vengeance in a warning tweet, when she wrote, “I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats … are for giving some one[sic] like me free time.”
Meanwhile her tweets have a Trump-like demeanor: bizarre, inaccurate, hypocritical and frequent. She attacks Biden for everything from taking naps (as did Reagan) to getting words wrong (as did Trump and Reagan) to never holding press conferences (Trump and Reagan sometimes went months without holding them).
Greene may be every bit as stupid as Trump is but she lacks Trump’s low, primitive cunning. Not only will Greene’s self-immolation not get her the White House, it might not even get her a second term. If she angers enough House members they just might expel her. It only takes two thirds. After all, even Republicans need time to steal, and Greene’s constant exercises in sophomoric self-promotion are starting to get in their way. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.