Yes, It Is The Greene Party (And It Always Was)

Yesterday, Democrats in Congress voted to remove committee assignments from Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Why did Democrats have to do such a thing? Because the night before, Republicans held a secret vote in which they decided that they would not remove her themselves. Reports even say they gave her a standing ovation once she apologized for believing in various forms of nonsense. (Nonsense Kevin McCarthy decided to play dumb too, hence why he pronounced Q-Anon “Q-on” because saying he doesn’t “even know what it is,” in spite of him voting for a Congressional Resolution condemning it.)

Now, fair is fair and eleven Republicans did vote along with every Democrat in the House to remove her from her committee assignments, but the fact that the vote was so partisan is a pretty good sign — well, that there’s some major divide going on between the two parties on this issue. A poll released yesterday found that more Republicans approve of Greene than do Liz Cheney, who’s considered the new head of the “moderate” Republicans. (“Moderate” meaning the nonsense she believes in has been so normalized that we aren’t allowed to point it out.)

Back in January 2019, Iowa Republican Steve King lost all his committee assignments after he infamously asked the following:

White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?

That comment alone caused King to lose any political capital he had built up when all of a sudden the same man Republicans had voted with for sixteen years had crossed a line — despite King being known for his history of racist comments for years beforehand. To anyone paying attention, it was clearly a party on shaky grounds regarding race trying to damage control and not the result of King actually crossing a line. What King said did not cause backlash from his fellow Republicans because they disagreed, but because King asked the quiet part out loud.

However, at least back then Republicans were willing to pretend there’s a difference between them and their worst members. Just as many of them stopped associating with Todd Akin after he made this infamous comment in 2012:

It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.

Once again, almost overnight, the Todd Akin they have served with for twelve years got thrown under the bus. Akin had made his career in the House as one of the biggest pro-life Republicans out there. However, because he went one piece of nonsense farther than the rest of them (for the record, this idea that women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” is rather popular in more extreme pro-life circles) all of a sudden he’s a radical.

This is why I do not believe we should be calling Greene’s wing the “Q-Anon wing” or the “radical wing.” Because, just like in the cases above, that allows Republicans to disassociate themselves from these people. Instead, I propose we start calling her wing, Akin’s wing, and King’s wing “the loudmouth wing” of the Republican Party. Because, at the end of the day, the main thing that separates these three Republicans from every other Republican politician is they don’t know when to shut up.

Here is my main question to those so invested in the Greene vs. Liz Cheney/Kevin McCarthy/Mitch McConnell fight: What actually makes these two wings different? What bill, for example, would Greene vote in favor of that McCarthy would vote against? What resolution would McCarthy introduce but Greene would speak out against? Far as I can tell, the answer is nothing; on basically every major issue of the day, both “wings” of the Republican Party are exactly the same in every way except optics.

Even some of her “conspiracy theories” are rather similar to the official Republican line. According to McConnell, Greene is insane for believing that Hillary Clinton was involved with the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. back in 1999. However, McConnell has never once issued the same condemnation of those who believe Clinton was involved with the deaths of Vince Foster, Seth Rich, or Jeffery Epstein. (In the case of Foster’s 1993 death, the argument is that Hillary had him killed to cover up an affair — this was before having affairs was one of the main things the Clinton’s were known for.) This is because the brand of Clinton crazies that believe in Greene’s JFK Jr. nonsense only came to that conclusion because of theories shoved down their throats by the Republican Party. Others believe that she was the reason four Americans died during Behngazi (a claim the House Intelligence Committee, which was run by Republicans at the time, found no evidence of) and that the Clinton Foundation is the reason why Haiti isn’t a utopia.

The “Clinton body count” theory has been popular among Republicans for many decades, even appearing in The Clinton Chronicles — a nonsense film that is sometimes cited as one of the reasons Republicans took Congress in 1994. McConnell will never disown these “conspiracy theories” (although he has never specifically endorsed them to my knowledge) because they are so widely believed by his party. The only reason he disowned Greene’s theory about JFK Jr. is because that one is fairly new — or because he believes JFK Jr. is actually still alive and is working with Donald Trump, as many in Q-Anon do. (One man during the storming of the capitol even had a “Donald Trump/JFK Jr. sign, implying that Trump was going to make JKF Jr. his Vice President during his second term after he overthrew the United States government.)

So please, do not act like this woman is different from the rest of the Republican Party — she’s not. She may say sillier things about “space lasers” and the like, but when it comes to how she votes, she’s no different than the rest of them. Hence why Republicans came to her defense over the past couple of days, because they understand she’s one of them.

Former Chairman for the California Republican Party Gaylord Parkinson once said “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” He understood that, at the end of the day, all Republicans are the same. And I’d recommend the media that praised Liz Cheney and the entire Democratic Party also start to understand that message.