Too close to Kevin for comfort? Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
A quick pop quiz: When you think of wild right-wing extremists in the U.S. House of Representatives, who comes to mind? While there are multiple acceptable answers (e.g., Paul Gosar, Andrew Clyde, Matt Gaetz), I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that the most common response would be: “Marjorie Taylor Greene, of course.” The reliably cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs utterances and conduct of the second-term congresswoman from northwest Georgia are already legendary. We’re talking about someone who had barely taken office before she was stripped of her committee assignments for issuing violent threats against then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Is there any classic quasi-fascistic outrage — from hanging with white supremacists to cheering the January 6 insurrectionists to borderline antisemitic rhetoric to inappropriate use of Holocaust analogies to self-identification as a Christian Nationalist — that Greene hasn’t indulged in publicly? It’s hard to think of many.
So it’s more than a little weird to read in Politico that the House Freedom Caucus is reportedly mulling a “purge” of members who are, well, just too normie for that fierce ultra-MAGA club, and that target No. 1 is none other than MTG. Seriously.
While the members suggesting a purge did not specify the people they want to remove, they are signaling that one target of any ejection push is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Some in the Freedom Caucus have focused on Greene, who’s become a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to illustrate their fears that certain group members are too aligned with GOP leaders and too outwardly critical of the group when it splits on certain issues.
It may say more about McCarthy than Greene that the two Republicans have become close allies. Indeed, it was generally assumed that McCarthy defended the ever-errant Georgian from the criticism she invited in order to protect his right flank going into his difficult battle for the speaker’s gavel in January. And it seemed to pay dividends, particularly when Greene got Donald Trump on the phone to plead with MAGA loyalists on McCarthy’s behalf during a tense moment in the balloting.
But the suddenly snuggly relationship between the Speaker and this turbulent back-bencher has not amused her Freedom Caucus colleagues, for whom keeping McCarthy in a state of fear and doubt about their willingness to tolerate him is absolute money. It’s true they are not fully in accord as to whether and when to depose McCarthy via the “motion to vacate the chair” instrument they preserved as an option during the Speakership fight. Some are ready to boot him right now in anger at the debt-limit deal that MTG helped McCarthy get through the House. But what’s not acceptable to them is being a loyal friend to the man they expect to squeeze regularly until such time as they take him right down. That has certainly been Greene’s recent positioning, which she’s made especially annoying to HFC members by criticizing them, according to the Politico report.
MTG’s tendency to train her unrestrained fire on fellow ideologues was richly illustrated this week when she was overheard on the House floor calling Lauren Boebert (once a sort of Greene doppelgänger, now more of a frenemy) “a little bitch” for allegedly stealing her Biden impeachment resolution (which, of course, McCarthy was avid to quash as grossly premature). Greene didn’t help matters by her clarification when asked about the incident, as my colleague Matt Stieb explained:
Defending her choice of words, to Semafor, Greene invoked the perfect logic of a bully. She said that she called Boebert a “little bitch” because she “has genuinely been a nasty little bitch to me.”
All righty then.
It’s not clear whether Greene would mind getting the heave-ho from the Freedom Caucus or any other group; she seems happiest as a very loose cannon, and she has a very safe House seat reinforced by the national MAGA fundraising base her antics have given her. It’s very unlikely she will achieve her maximum short-term goal (we are told) of becoming Trump’s 2024 running mate; even he isn’t that irresponsible. But so long as she has powerful friends like McCarthy and Trump, she’s probably fine being a caucus of one.
"loyalty" - Google News
June 24, 2023 at 04:00AM
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Freedom Caucus Mulls Ejecting MTG for Loyalty to McCarthy - New York Magazine
"loyalty" - Google News
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