(Dobbs) Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Right About One Thing: Her Party Is A Failure. And So Is She.
She got shoved right off the coveted front page.
Poor Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Georgia’s bombastic bomb thrower grabbed the headlines Friday morning when she announced she is “done” with her fellow conservative, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and intends after the upcoming House recess to call for a vote to oust him. His crime? He allowed the House to approve legislation in a better than two-to-one bipartisan vote to let the government stay in business— you know, little things like keeping the doors open at the Department of Defense.
But no sooner did she throw that bomb when she was replaced in the headlines by the sad taped revelation in England by the Princess of Wales that her shrouded-in-secrecy surgery in mid-January showed that she does have cancer and is now undergoing chemo. But that didn’t last long either before news broke about the massacre at the beginning of a concert near Moscow where at least 40 people died and the concert hall burned down.
Poor Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the proudest of bomb throwers, got bombed right off the front page.
It must be maddening to her. She likes to rabble-rouse. She likes to get her picture on every news feed she can. She managed it earlier this month when she ignored the appeal by Speaker Johnson to show decorum during President Biden’s State of the Union and shouted at him from the floor, and albeit a less indecorous infraction, just for good measure she also violated the House rule that prohibits hats on the floor of the chamber, a ban in place for only 184 years.
She seems to subscribe to the old Hollywood dictum, “I don’t care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right.” Well, maybe she’s still resting easy then, even after some of her fellow Republicans tore her apart for calling for a vote to oust the Speaker. South Dakota Republican senator Kevin Kramer said, “I don’t get the desire for chaos”— and chaos it would be if the House has to go through the whole mess of selecting a speaker once again. New York Republican representative Mike Lawler was more blunt: he called Greene’s plan “idiotic.”
Of course she’s used to the brickbats, because she has acted like an idiot since she took her seat in Congress. Still, even if she thinks she’s one smart cookie, her maneuver may backfire. The Republicans have an ever-slimmer majority— yet another Republican, Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher, just followed on the heels of Colorado’s Ken Buck, whose last day in the House was today, and announced that he will resign his seat three weeks from now.
So Speaker Johnson, to keep his gavel, will need the votes of Democrats and to get those, he might finally have to bring the long-overdue Ukraine aid bill up for a vote. If he does, by all accounts, it will pass, and Democrats will let him stay at the top of the pyramid.
After the vote to approve government funding, Greene posted on X, “Our Republican majority is a complete failure,” but that backfired too. The Democratic National Committee posted right on top of it, “We approve this message.”
Still though, she is right about the failure. Although the Speaker defended the funding bill saying, “House Republicans achieved conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts…,” it’s actually the other way around. Some of the highest Democratic priorities got saved, some of the most extreme Republican proposals got cut.
Poor Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is a piece of work. Bad work. The next best step would be to put her out of work.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer gal.
AMEN!