It seems every other week someone asks, “Can’t you guys just forget about Marjorie Taylor Greene? All this attention just feeds her nonsense. Please, just ignore her!”
Yes, I get that. I often feel that way. Having raised four kids, I know the best way to handle a toddler who’s face down on the floor wailing and kicking is to pay them no mind.
To give them any attention is to legitimize the tantrum. So, the best parental strategy is to let ‘em flail away, wipe off their snotty nose when they finish, and get on with it. (This is harder to do, of course, when you’re out at the Kroger).
I write this as Georgia’s own Congresswoman Greene gets set this week to try to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson for working with Dems and trying to somehow let government function.
It’s not like Mr. Speaker has gone lib. Far from it. Gay people have long been angry with him. He’s deeply anti-abortion, verging into anti-contraception. And he’s a 2020 election denier. So, one might assume he’s the full conservative package.
But that would be old-school thinking. Johnson is still fiercely right wing, he just doesn’t have enough antagonistic divisiveness in him to satisfy U.S. Rep. Whack-a-Doodle, R-Disruption City, whose mission in life is to fester on the body politic.
There’s no need to go into all the conspiracies she’s spouted or the wrongheadedness that she constantly embodies. Suffice it to say, she keeps comedians and commentators plenty busy.
The flashpoint in Greene’s most recent conniption is that Johnson worked with House Democrats on some bills that included funding to keep the government going and also aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Credit: New York Post
Credit: New York Post
Moscow Marjorie, as the New York Post tabbed her, did not go for that. Not one bit. So now she’s out to oust Johnson.
Last week, in front of a gaggle of cameras and microphones, Greene outlined why she was targeting Johnson. She called him a leader of the “uniparty,” you know, that conglomeration of Ds and Rs who run the hated “Swamp.” Some may see the recent votes as bipartisanship, compromise or even reality.
But those qualities are from a different era.
At her press conference, Greene put up posters of Johnson and Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries being cordial. One had Johnson awkwardly bro-hugging his Democratic counterpart.
“Now we have Hakeem Jeffries coming out over and over again, embracing Mike Johnson with a warm hug and a big wet sloppy kiss,” she said. “They want to keep the band together.”
Johnson later responded with classic Southern passive aggression.
“Bless her heart,” he told a news program. “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about her.”
I imagine he was fibbing about that.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
House Democrats have vowed to back the ultra-conservative Johnson if there’s a vote so he can hang onto his job and the chamber can retain a semblance of normalcy.
This presents a problem, though. Greene wants to force reasonable Republicans to make a choice: Go with Johnson and the Dems and get primaried by far-right bomb throwers. Or vote with Greene and show your true MAGA colors.
Even Mr. MAGA himself, the Big Orange Fellow, is said to not be much in favor of all this because it makes the GOP look even crazier while he’s trying to win an election.
Oh, the chaos!
But this goes back to my point. Is the news doing the nation a disservice by paying an inordinate amount of attention to a person aimed at nothing other than rancor and disruption? With each odious pronouncement, she’s accorded a media scrum, which then continues to feed the monster, AKA her ego.
She’s recently been deemed irrelevant and even called an “idiot” by a Fox News commentator.
But she’s not dumb. She’s clever, like a weasel.
Whenever she goes on the MAGA stump, she draws crowds and applause and is solid at raising money, the lifeblood of politics.
With a razor thin margin in the House (217-212, Republican), Greene and a couple of other co-conspirators easily can raise havoc, which they are happy to do.
Brian Robinson, a former gubernatorial aide in Georgia and now a commentator and GOP operative, said covering her, or not covering her, really doesn’t matter.
“She doesn’t need y’all; she exists in an eco-system you don’t really even know about,” he told me. “Mainstream media saying how horrible she is doesn’t hurt her. It gives her bona fides with her fan base.”
Robinson noted that GOP radicals “have played their hand for a decade. They took out (former Speaker John) Boehner. They hated (former Speaker Paul) Ryan, and they took out (former Speaker Kevin) McCarthy. Now these guys (the radicals, that is) are becoming irrelevant.”
Some have plugged into relevance by joining the policy process, he said. Others, like MTG, “see relevance in money and attention.”
Unfortunately, at this moment in history, political irritants are part of the pudding, barometers of the state of dysfunction.
And that is news.
As it turns out, we’re kind of stuck with her. At least for now.
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