MTG is so over the top that I normally would have suspected some kind of performance art, like the final project for an art degree somewhere, intended to chock people and to see where they will draw the line. When no line is visible, she escalates to find it. Rinse, repeat. Stuck on a hamster wheel that goes faster and faster, with people cheering her on instead of trying to stop her...
That would have made for a good movie once upon a time. There probably is some movie or books like that out there already. Not that it really matters, now it is reality and just batshit crazy! It is so absurd that it should be funny, but I’m terrified.
Probably not as terrified as a member of Congress whose child has now been threatened by name on phone calls made to the family's home. Even hearing about that from one of the members speaking from the floor of the House didn't dissuade the pro Trump wing of the GOP yesterday from voting against the resolution to remove Greene from committee posts.
Yet they had only grumbled (a few of them) when McCarthy had done the right thing and stripped Steve King of committee posts after
King had asked, rhetorically, as a doubling down on previous remarks about white supremacy, "white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
But that was enough to get King not only booted off all committees (joining two then under-indictment Republicans Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins in having no posts) but earned him a primary race and ultimately the loss of his seat in Congress. King also managed to be one of only five (all GOP) House members
voting against an October 2020 resolution to accept election results peacefully if Trump lost the election then still to be held.
But Taylor Greene has claimed backing of a former and twice-impeached president, fails to renounce vicious Christian Nationalist rhetoric including anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim innuendo, failed to apologize directly and publicly for having liked a social media post favoring assassination of Pelosi, openly mocks the leadership in both chambers.... and yet Kevin McCarthy threaded a needle in a private House GOP session and ended up supporting both Liz Cheney and Taylor Greene to paper over the GOP's fissures, then supported Greene again yesterday with the other Trump bootlickers and so let the Dems stick their fingerprints on Greene's loss of voice on any House committees. And I suspect he was grateful in the end because Greene, let's face it, is too far over the line for him and for a lot of other GOP House members. They are just too cowed by their own damn extremist base.
Still... McCarthy went so far as to warn the Dems, even in his own clear dereliction of duty, that what goes around comes around and that the GOP has a list of "equivalent" situations they mean to remedy when they regain power. To me that makes it worthwhile to ensure they never regain power, but that's up to the voters.
Anyway I am unable even to envision the wrath of the GOP and its media outlet support system if a Democratic Party candidate ran an ad picturing the Dem holding an AR15 next to photo of the faces of the GOP candidate and a couple colleagues. First thing out of the RNC's big money mouth would be
"And you thought the Willie Horton ad was out of line?"
Yet the openly pro-Trump crowd in the House had no vote to put behind their possible disapproval of that ad run by Greene, even after a still clip of it was shown to them before they had to go on record yesterday. She did not renounce that ad nor the xenophobic and bigoted sentiments behind it. So her party peers were largely cowards when it was time to vote yesterday. Zero empathy for a peer whose child receives death threats just because of the parent's visibility as a member of Congress who is not a white Christian.
How could they look at their own children last night and not think back on the day's proceedings? Were they afraid if they voted against punishing Greene, that death threats by rightwing extremists would then swing around and come home to roost against their own families? I suppose that entirely possible. but who are these officials that some Americans choose to represent them in our house of the people? Willing to tolerate violence against political opponents out of fear that if they don't, they too will encounter it from their own erstwhile supporters?
I expect to hear that those voting not to strip Greene of her assignments merely think that it is a party's decision to discipline their own members. McCarthy won't have the grace to say he couldn't afford to do that and retain his own post while hoping to gain the Speaker's gavel after 2022 midterms.
