Marjorie Taylor-Greene: The GOP’s Worst Nightmare? Michael Steele, the former Chair of the Republican National Committee, believes that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene will become “the most powerful speaker of the House” if House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy ascends to the speakership. Steele elaborated, during a discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” stating that Greene would be able to “control what comes out of Kevin’s mouth.”
Marjorie Taylor-Greene: How Is She Electable?
Of course, Steele is just a pundit at this point and his words aren’t prophecy. But any indication that Greene would gain influence is concerning, because, well, Greene is quite clearly deranged.
I’m hesitant to dismiss an elected official out of hand as deranged. Really, an elected official is a distillation of an entire voting district’s viewpoints into one person; that one person is a proxy of the people who elected him or her.
Dismissing that elected official and her worldviews, without nuance or qualification, as deranged, is roughly equivalent to dismissing the people who elected her as deranged. And the people of Georgia are not deranged. They’re frustrated and disappointed and confused – and with good reason. Many of their interests have been neglected, many of them have been left behind. When your interests are repeatedly neglected, it doesn’t make much sense to keep electing a status quo official.
Why Greene?
Electing a counter-cultural, fringe figure like Greene may seem desperate and unwise to outsiders, but to the neglected, it likely seems necessary – a last ditch effort to send someone to Washington who cares about you and yours.
Unfortunately for the Georgians who elected Greene, they blew their shot at sending a reformative figure to Washington on their behalf. They sent a full-blown kook who, frankly, has no business serving anywhere near our country’s legislative apparatus.
Marjorie Taylor-Greene Has Wacky Ideas
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a bonafide conspiracy theorist. She openly supports Pizzagate and QAnon, which believes in a link between Hillary Clinton, pedophilia, human sacrifice. Greene went as far as to propose that Clinton has ordered the murders of her political rivals, including JFK Jr., who died in a 1999 plane crash.
Pizzagate and QAnon are only the tip of the iceberg.
Greene posted to Facebook in 2012, agreeing with a conspiracy theory known as Frazzledrip, which suggests that Hillary Clinton, along with her long-time aide Huma Abedin, murdered a child in a satanic ritual – and then, to cover up the sacrifice, killed a cop.
Greene also claims that the Spet. 11 terrorist attack against the Pentagon was staged.
She has contested the accepted notion that only one gunman carried out the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting.
Greene has called Heather Heyer’s murder – Heyer was hit by a car during the 2017 Charlottesville Unite The Right rally – an “inside job.”
The conspiracy theories don’t end, really.
They’re like a foundation of Greene’s personality, her policy platform almost. For example, she believes that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was replaced with a body double later in her life.
Greene does not believe the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, nor the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, happened in the way the media suggests.
In 2018, Greene suggested that the Camp Fire was the result of a conspiracy between California Governor Jerry Brown, PG&E, Rothschild & Co., and Solaren, who had all gotten together to test out “space solar generators” to purposefully start a deadly forest fire.
Like I said, Greene is quite clearly deranged.
The idea that Greene could be ascendant in the House is just plain bad news.
Greene should be divested of responsibility and status post-haste. She is not worthy of her voters’ confidence, nor her voters’ hopes. She is a physical manifestation of what is wrong with the internet. She is what happens when good people grow desperate.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, he joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. He lives in Oregon and listens to Dokken.