Things Are Getting Ugly for Marjorie Taylor Greene – Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has had an interesting career arc since getting elected to Congress in 2020. She entered into the fray that is modern US politics by being steadfastly MAGA and, during her first days on Capitol Hill, she was mired in controversy because she was part of the “Stop the Steal” effortsthat the MAGA wing of the GOP mounted to challenge the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (or MTG as she is affectionately known by her fans) then became ensconced in the events of January 6 when she was one of the few champions of the civil rights of the accused January 6 protesters who’ve been kept in jail, without access to their basic civil liberties.
Because of her support of “Stop the Steal” and the January 6 protesters, MTG was removed from her committee assignments and effectively ostracized for the first two years of her time in Congress.
Things got better for her, though, as the Republicans won the United States House of Representatives (barely) in 2022. MTG made serious moves to enhance her standing with the divided House GOP. She did something that few people believed was possible: MTG made a tactical (rather than ideological) pivot away from the Hard Right and moved closer to the House Republican leadership.
In doing so, contrary to what the Far Right believes, MTG was bringing MAGA to the mainstream of the House GOP. But this was lost on many of her supporters. After all, they just wanted to burn the system down.
From “Trump in Heels” to “Large Marge”
As elements of the Republican Party, led by the likes of gonzo Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), attempted to prevent Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from ascending to the speakership of the House, MTG shocked everyone and stood by McCarthy.
This earned her the undying enmity of many of her former diehard supporters. Calling her “Large Marge” and other epithets, the Georgia congresswoman went from being “Trump in Heels” to a RINO (Republican In Name Only). She never once abandoned her previous policy positions in any substantive way.
All MTG did was recognize the futility of challenging McCarthy’s rise to the speakership in January 2023, and the danger that a protracted fight over his nomination to the House Speaker role posed to the GOP.
Meanwhile, MTG made insinuations that she was aiming for higher political office.
For example, her benefactor, former President Donald J. Trump urged her to run for the Georgia senate seat. Steve Bannon cautioned his audience that, in fact, he believed MTG was angling to be Trump’s vice-presidential running-mate should Trump win the GOP nomination in the 2024 Republican Party primary.
The reason that many on the Right began taking a more circumspect attitude toward MTG was because they believed she’d betrayed their cause by siding with McCarthy.
The final straw for the Right came when MTG, along with another Right-wing favorite, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), supported Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s deal with President Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling.
This was a legislative bridge too far for the Right. MTG was truly a traitor in their eyes; a creature of the establishment who betrayed her supporters and walked away from the mantle of the MAGA movement.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Uses Her Tactical Brilliance
MTG displayed tactical brilliance, though, when she along with Rep. Jordan aligned both with McCarthy’s preordained rise to the speakership and when she voted to raise the debt ceiling. This is not because MTG is any less MAGA than she was in January 2020.
It’s because she’s figured out how to play the Washington game better. What good is she or any of the other MAGA representatives in Congress, if they are perennially left on the outside? How will MAGA be able to influence anything if it has no members in positions of power?
What’s more, MTG rightly assessed that risking a massive financial crisis, of the kind that would have occurred had the United States defaulted on its massive debt because of a failure to raise the debt ceiling, in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential Election would have damaged the GOP greatly.
Many of the MAGA wing, though, simply want a standoff over these critical areas.
They didn’t care how insane Rep. Boebert’s seemingly endless (and, as Sean Hannity showed at the time, totally useless) challenge to McCarthy was nor did they care how suicidal for the Republican Party’s chances in 2024 refusing to raise the debt ceiling would have been.
They wanted a fight. I assume they wanted the Alamo, with their representatives playing the part of Davy Crockett. The Far Right desired to have a final legislative stand that would have highlighted the inherent weaknesses of the GOP elite and the corruption of Washington’s spendthrift ways to rally the Republican Party going into the 2024 Presidential Election.
The only problem with that view was that a poorly planned debt ceiling battle would have exhausted the narrow majority the Republicans have in the House and would have weakened the GOP significantly going into the 2024 election.
Far from the Alamo, then, the Republicans would have replicated the events at the Little Big Horn: with the MAGA wing playing the role of Colonel Custer.
MTG, Jim Jordan, and the others who both supported Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid and who voted to raise the debt ceiling until after the 2024 election, were displaying long-term tactical prowess in service to a larger strategy of victory in 2024.
The GOP rarely does well when it spends its entire time in office bickering amongst itself.
The Democrats Pile On
Marjorie Taylor Greene rightly recognized this. And the Right hates her for it. This could very well be her undoing. Especially now as the Left piles on. MTG claims that she felt physically threatened during a recent heated exchange between herself and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) on the steps of Capitol Building.
According to MTG, the New York Democrat was “making threatening physical gestures” toward her.
MTG further claims that she was threatened by Rep. Bowman on April 4, when the Georgia Republican drove to New York City to protest the indictment of former President Trump for his alleged 2016 hush money payment of $130,000 to the pornographic film star, Stormy Daniels. While MTG was arriving to the protest in her car, Rep. Bowman apparently led a counter-protest that surrounded MTG’s car and shouted severe vituperations at her.
The Democrats have claimed that MTG’s comments about her congressional colleague, Bowman, are racist. One claim shared in the New York Times, accuses MTG of engaging in the same kind of rhetoric that Carolyn Donham, a white woman who claimed that she was harassed by 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955, that got the 14-year-old Till gruesomely lynched.
While some Right-wing social media accounts have defended MTG, the usual vociferous defense mounted by the Right on the controversial Georgia Republican’s behalf has not been forthcoming. Thus, a perfect political storm might be brewing for MTG. She’s in office until 2024.
MTG Faces Tough Political Headwinds
But the loss of goodwill and support from what were once her stalwarts on the Right, coupled with the hatred of MTG that has existed on the Left since MTG became a congresswoman in 2020, means that MTG is increasingly an island unto herself. That’s not a good place to be, if you have greater political ambitions, as MTG clearly does.
Marjorie Taylor Greene could begin treading water soon in what was a meteorically rising career until the last five months. It remains to be seen if she can weather the political storm. Although, MTG is a fighter and a survivor. And one of the most fascinating (whether you like her or not) figures in American politics today.
I’d not count her out yet. But she’s definitely got some problems that she’ll need to address soon, if she plans of being in national politics beyond 2024.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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