GREENE’S COMEUPPANCE
In more sane times, the shame of the failure of the motion by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, on Wednesday would be enough to silence her for at least a while. But we’re not sure she feels shame.
The two-term lawmaker, who represents Northwest Georgia just across the state border from Chattanooga, was not just defeated but humiliated when the House voted 359-43 to table her motion to vacate the office of speaker. Only 10 of her Republican colleagues voted with her.
All Tennessee House members voted to table the bill. All other Georgia Republicans did likewise.
Just days earlier, Greene believed she was in the driver’s seat because Johnson had disappointed some of her nationalist colleagues by passing a bill with Democratic support that provided aid for Ukraine in its war with Russia, and she only needed to say the word to have a motion to vacate his position come to the House floor.
Despite Democrats saying in recent days they’d vote to keep Johnson, and despite some apparent second thoughts about bringing such a motion, she did it anyway. First, she got booed for announcing the motion, and later she was thrashed in the vote.
But Thursday, feeling no shame, Greene took to X (formerly Twitter) to wag a finger at unnamed people who suggested the sky would fall if she made the motion to vacate. Since most of the public comment around such a vote only indicated she would lose it, we’re not sure who the “they” who said “scary bad things” would happen were. Perhaps, the same ones who would employ the “Jewish space lasers” she once touted as real.
Writing as if the vote had gone her way, she said, “The good news this morning is now the American people have been shown the truth.
“Words are meaningless when they are never backed by actions.
“And you know what else didn’t happen? “Congress, which is paid by the American people and sent to represent them, didn’t stop the border crisis, didn’t stop funding foreign wars, didn’t protect America’s energy industry, didn’t cut spending to reduce inflation, didn’t defund the weaponized government, instead Congress protected itself and kept the Uniparty control over the People’s House.”
Despite Greene’s theatrics, it’s clear many of her Republican colleagues, who ousted Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year and wasted days trying to elect a new speaker, have had it.
“We know that this motion is not going to do one thing to make America stronger,” said U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, no relation to the Louisiana representative. “It’s not going to do one thing to deliver a conservative victory. She is engaged in a failing act of political theater. … We’re going to do what adults do; we’re going to ignore the tantrums and instead work to actually govern this country.”
U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-New York, said, “There should be accountability for those who continue to make this about themselves. Lies and dishonesty are a hell of a lot louder than truth and selfishness. I will leave to you to figure out which side of the equation she is on.”
Former President Donald Trump, in whom so many like Greene have staked their reputation, said on his social media platform that “I absolutely love” Greene, but “it is my request” that Republicans table her motion.
Before the GOP candidate ever published his remarks, the House already was in the process of doing so.
If Republicans want to expand their slim House majority, and take the Senate, they need to stop letting the Marjorie Taylor Greenes among them have their way. Thursday’s vote may have been a start. Success in a divided government is understanding that no party gets what it wants 100% of the time.
Johnson, perhaps somewhat emboldened by the vote (yet still a motion away from a similar vacating vote), suggested in remarks in Statuary Hall afterward that order was preferable to chaos.
“I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort,” he said. “Hopefully, this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress. It’s regrettable. It’s not who we are as Americans, and we’re better than this. We need to get beyond it.”
As much of an embarrassment as Thursday’s vote was to Greene, we don’t see her Georgia 14th District clamoring to get rid of her. That’s unfortunate. Although four Democrats are running in the May 21 primary to face her in November, she is unopposed in the Republican primary, and won her first two general election campaigns with 74.7% and 65.9% of the vote.
That her conservative district reject her is less important than the Republican caucus’s need do so. It’s time for the GOP to return to being the party of leadership and ideas and not the one of chaos and confusion.