Marjorie Taylor Greene craziness megathread

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The fact that 199 Republicans heard MTG's "I used to believe [cascade of conspiracies, disinformation, and lies] but now I'm sowwy. 😢" and decided to leave her on committees isn't surprising, but it is kind of sad. It's not like Republicans are the ones holding a narrow majority and they need Greene's vote to maintain power; it seems like a fairly easy and consequence-free way to strip her of her positions. I know it already was just a way to criticize Democrats, but you can't use the "Democrats are the real racists/antisemites/etc." argument when you have 90%+ of your own party voting in support of a person who, among many, many other things, thinks that "Zionist supremacists" are conspiring to replace white people in Europe.

Is there something I'm missing here? Is there some great harm that would befall the Republican party if they stripped Greene of her committee positions or if she was expelled altogether?

Historically the minority party has been able to control their own committee assignments. For the majority party to have veto power over the minority party's choices breaks convention and probably pisses off a lot of Republicans, even ones who were happy to throw Steve King under the bus a couple years ago.

With the impeachment vote, it seems clear that it was electorally damaging to all the "yes" votes, and they voted that way out of principle, knowing they'd draw primary challengers.

For this vote, I don't think any primary voters will remember it in a few years, which is why most of the yes votes were people in swing districts, especially around New York and Florida where 9/11 or Parkland trutherism would be a general election liability.

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Fitzpatrick votes for this but not impeachment, Cheney (and others) vote for impeachment but not for this...

I don’t get it.

The impeachment vote is a surefire way to draw Trump's personal ire and a major primary challenge. I don't think any of the yes votes had any political gain from it, so they likely did it out of principle. Plenty of the "no" votes surely loathed Trump but were avoiding political risk.

This vote on committee stuff will not be remembered by any primary voters, but could be a factor in general elections. In fact I would posit that most of the GOP "yes" votes were voting to avoid political risk, not out of principle. While the "no" votes are actually pissed off that Democrats would break convention and go after their committee assignments.

Certainly Cheney would never in a million years vote yes while she's in leadership, since she would be seen as betraying the caucus directly.

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If Democrats had an equivalent to MTG in Congress somehow, we wouldn't need Republicans to keep him/her out of Comittees. We'd do it ourselves in a heartbeat. Liz's threat means nothing.

The threat is that when the GOP has control, they'll remove committee assignments from Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, or some other people Fox News is mad at. And if they have the majority, they can do that and there's nothing Dems can do about it.

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If Democrats had an equivalent to MTG in Congress somehow, we wouldn't need Republicans to keep him/her out of Comittees. We'd do it ourselves in a heartbeat. Liz's threat means nothing.

The threat is that when the GOP has control, they'll remove committee assignments from Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, or some other people Fox News is mad at. And if they have the majority, they can do that and there's nothing Dems can do about it.

Did any of those people support execution/death of other House members?

That's irrelevant. The point is that if the GOP has a majority and is united, they can remove any Dem they want, from any committee, for any reason. Even if they don't do it in 2023 for whatever person Fox News hates that year, it's something the majority is empowered to do.

[LtNOWIS]

If Democrats had an equivalent to MTG in Congress somehow, we wouldn't need Republicans to keep him/her out of Comittees. We'd do it ourselves in a heartbeat. Liz's threat means nothing.

The threat is that when the GOP has control, they'll remove committee assignments from Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, or some other people Fox News is mad at. And if they have the majority, they can do that and there's nothing Dems can do about it.

Did any of those people support execution/death of other House members?

That's irrelevant. The point is that if the GOP has a majority and is united, they can remove any Dem they want, from any committee, for any reason. Even if they don't do it in 2023 for whatever person Fox News hates that year, it's something the majority is empowered to do.

So you're saying that republicans, when they get the chance, are going to strip democrats of their committee assignments without cause?

That's wildly different from removing someone from their committees b/c they called for the assassination of the Speaker of the House and have accused Hillary Clinton of satanic worship and pedophilia. If republicans ever choose to go down that road, that is a battle they will eventually lose, and will do nothing in the long run but completely obliterate any and all remaining democratic resistance to the ideas of abolishing the filibuster, adding DC and Puerto Rico, and banning Congressional gerrymandering. Gerrymandering and DC and Puerto Rico not being states are pretty much the only way republicans have a shot at being in the majority in the first place.

The cause would be retaliation, with whatever Fox News outrage de jour as a pretext. I'm not saying they will do that, or that anyone will care about this stuff in 23 months, but that is the threat. It's baffling how people don't understand the simple idea that any parliamentary procedure can be used both ways and that "but this person actually was bad!" means very little in politics.

As for the Dems doing all the things you mention, they would need the Senate to do that, and they would need Senators who care about whatever internal drama is going on in the lower house of Congress. But sure, maybe hypothetical retaliation will result in even more hypothetical retaliation.

[LtNOWIS]

If Democrats had an equivalent to MTG in Congress somehow, we wouldn't need Republicans to keep him/her out of Comittees. We'd do it ourselves in a heartbeat. Liz's threat means nothing.

The threat is that when the GOP has control, they'll remove committee assignments from Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, or some other people Fox News is mad at. And if they have the majority, they can do that and there's nothing Dems can do about it.

Did any of those people support execution/death of other House members?

That's irrelevant. The point is that if the GOP has a majority and is united, they can remove any Dem they want, from any committee, for any reason. Even if they don't do it in 2023 for whatever person Fox News hates that year, it's something the majority is empowered to do.

So you're saying that republicans, when they get the chance, are going to strip democrats of their committee assignments without cause?

That's wildly different from removing someone from their committees b/c they called for the assassination of the Speaker of the House and have accused Hillary Clinton of satanic worship and pedophilia. If republicans ever choose to go down that road, that is a battle they will eventually lose, and will do nothing in the long run but completely obliterate any and all remaining democratic resistance to the ideas of abolishing the filibuster, adding DC and Puerto Rico, and banning Congressional gerrymandering. Gerrymandering and DC and Puerto Rico not being states are pretty much the only way republicans have a shot at being in the majority in the first place.

The cause would be retaliation, with whatever Fox News outrage de jour as a pretext. I'm not saying they will do that, or that anyone will care about this stuff in 23 months, but that is the threat. It's baffling how people don't understand the simple idea that any parliamentary procedure can be used both ways and that "but this person actually was bad!" means very little in politics.

As for the Dems doing all the things you mention, they would need the Senate to do that, and they would need Senators who care about whatever internal drama is going on in the lower house of Congress. But sure, maybe hypothetical retaliation will result in even more hypothetical retaliation.

"Retaliation" is not a cause. A cause is something that someone has done to legitimately warrant being fired from their job, or in this case, being removed from a committee. Republicans exacting some warped idea of revenge for democrats doing the right thing by removing a violent, terrorist sympathizing bigot from House committees is not a cause. Omar or Ocasio-Cortez would have to do (or say) something similarly beyond the pale like Greene has for it to be "cause".

Now, sure, House republicans could do what you're saying....but, again....it wouldn't be for "cause", it would be for rank politics. And, again, if they ever went down that road, the next time dems had the trifecta, they would likely destroy republicans' chance to hold either chamber with the exception of extreme pro-republican wave years. So.....good luck with that.

And yeh.....senators would definitely care about "lower house" drama when that drama is members being kicked off committees for no reason. Do that and see what happens to republican senators and their precious SCOTUS majority.

"When they do something it's rank politics, when we do something it's high-minded, apolitical defense of the institution."

How high on your own supply do you have to be to both believe that's true, and believe that the truth will matter in these circumstances? I bet you think the Democrats were clearly morally correct over the past 12 years as well. But guess what, that's evidently not good enough to win a national election. The other party behaving in a sh**tty way is not going to reliably backfire on them or inspire your party to reach new heights of ruthless efficiency.

All of the horrors and shocking behavior of the Trump era got them a narrowly lost presidency and modest house gains. After all that, and the certification vote, and the impeachment vote, Dems still aren't united in their ruthless pursuit of huge reforms, either on a policy level or on structural matters like court-packing. The past 4 years of insanity didn't bring Democrats together to bar the GOP from power forever (if that's even possible). If you have the power and will to permanently lock the GOP out of power, just go ahead and do it now. If you don't, then I highly doubt some fresh outrage will make it possible.