Marjorie Taylor Greene can now use her great talents to lower the temperature
Marjorie Taylor Greene entered Congress on Jan. 3, 2021, one of the most combustible and dangerous weeks in American history, steeped in online conspiracies.
Greene dove headfirst into QAnon nonsense, calling Q a “patriot” in 2017. She questioned whether a plane really flew into the Pentagon on Sept. 11 and if the 2017 Las Vegas massacre of 58 country music fans was part of a conspiracy to enact gun control laws.
At the time, MTG had clearly never given much thought to politics, policy or history. She’d never voted before the 2016 general election. As a member of Congress, she called the Nazi secret police “the Gazpacho,” confusing the Gestapo with a Spanish soup.
Americans, not just my fellow Georgians, are wondering how we got from there to here.
‘You can’t look away’: How a Republican saw Greene
Greene splashed onto Georgia’s political scene, seemingly from out of nowhere, in the 2020 election cycle. Like a Kardashian, she took root in our consciousness, but we weren’t sure how or why.
Greene, then living in Alpharetta, first ran for the Republican nomination for the suburban 6th Congressional District, which was represented by a first-term Democrat, Rep. Lucy McBath. The GOP congresswoman whom McBath beat in 2018, Karen Handel, was running for a rematch and she took the opposition from Greene seriously.
“There’s just something about her,” Handel told me. “You can’t look away.”
Greene posted cringey videos online. There’s her making disgusted faces to the camera during a Drag Queen Story Hour at a north Fulton library. There’s her chasing after David Hogg, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre and gun control activist, yelling at him on Capitol Hill.
When the 14th Congressional District seat in northwest Georgia came open, she moved to Rome and ran there instead. Despite a crowded field with legitimate contenders who were actually from the district, Greene steamrolled through the election.
MTG’s antics didn’t cease when she entered Congress. She theorized that space lasers were used to start wildfires, she paid thousands in fines for refusing to wear a mask in the House chamber during COVID-19 and she screamed “Liar!” at then-President Joe Biden during a State of the Union address.
Bombastic personality didn’t match who her local constituents know
While the establishment grimaced and sneered, her admirers cheered. She raised millions of dollars. Speaker Kevin McCarthy valued her counsel, and Donald Trump platformed her as an opening act at his rallies — where she drew reactions as loud as his.
All along, I heard from state legislators and businesses in her district that the MTG behind the scenes bore little resemblance to her bombastic public persona. She’s thoughtful and easy to talk to, a legislator said. She’s well-briefed on our issues, a hospital executive said.
Now, a national audience of critics and fans is seeing that version of Greene. Her bombshell resignation in a Friday evening surprise video sent shock waves through the state, with many wondering what’s coming next. A run for governor? U.S. Senate? The White House?
Maybe. Or maybe she’s just burned out and had enough exposure to Chernobyl and wants to return to normal. She’s expressed disgust with the toxicity of politics and apologized for her role in it.
Her conversion is one of tone and presentation, not of core principles. Her laundry list of policy positions in her video provides a level of substance rarely seen in political communications. Her views on foreign wars and immigration and foreign aid reflect the views of an isolationist strain with a long history in American conservatism.
MTG promises to move away from toxic politics and we need that
MTG’s metamorphosis isn’t all that rare. It’s just more in our face. Many “outsiders” go to Congress, hyped up on the rhetoric of partisan outlets, thinking they’ll knock some common sense into this collection of idiotic nincompoops.
As they dig in on committee work, hear other viewpoints and seek to move policy forward, they learn there are no easy, painless answers to our nation’s most pressing problems.
The radical views that spurred Greene’s first run put her on a collision course with the brick wall of reality. Give her credit for that maturation and the refusal to keep playing the same game to keep her position of power.
When it comes to the performance art of politics, Greene’s talent has few peers in the country. I hope she uses her skills to lower the temperature in American politics. We need a little less Gestapo and a little more cool, refreshing gazpacho.
Brian Robinson owns a public affairs communications firm in Atlanta. A previous spokesperson for Georgia Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, Robinson is co-host of WABE’s “Political Breakfast.”
