The Marjorie Taylor Greene New Deal

Since Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) first arrived in Congress five years ago, she has been portrayed by the Washington press corps as a comic figure. They routinely mocked her for questioning mask mandates and accused her of spreading QAnon conspiracy theories. During recent weeks, after her falling out with President Trump over the fabled Epstein files, the oracles of the corporate “news” media have had an epiphany concerning Greene’s importance to the GOP. Following her announcement last Friday evening that she will resign from the House of Representatives  effective January 5, they discovered that she is an important political figure whose departure spells doom for MAGA.

The New York Times portentously opined, “Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sudden resignation underscored the fragility of the G.O.P. majority, and exposed deep discontent on the right going into the midterm elections.” Her announcement was delivered in an X post and was essentially a catalogue of grievances about the Republican Party. To support the claim that Greene’s resignation exposed “deep discontent” throughout the GOP, the Times went to malcontents like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) for quotes like this: “There’s more honesty expressed in these four pages than most politicians will speak in a lifetime.” The Washington Post also declared Greene’s departure as bad news for the GOP.

It’s the most significant sign yet that the MAGA coalition, centered around one uniquely charismatic man, is showing cracks … The MAGA crack-up is playing out on several fronts. The business community loves tax cuts but is horrified by Trump’s shakedowns. Farmers clamor for a bailout because they have fewer markets to sell their crops. It’s slowly dawning on unions that backed Trump because they wanted tariffs that raising taxes on imports hurts workers more than it helps. Some previously august conservative institutions are allowing radical voices to crowd out the center. Trump’s instinct-first, transactional foreign policy has left every faction skeptical.

This caricature of the Republican coalition and Trump’s policies bears no more resemblance to the truth than anything else the Post has printed about either during the last ten years. The reality is that Greene’s abrupt resignation is a sign that President Trump remains in control of the Republican Party. Greene has always been something of an embarrassment to thoughtful Republicans — particularly those of us who reside in Georgia. As far back as 2021, she was already notorious for saying stupid things like the following: “Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star.” The mask mandates were indeed idiotic, but her Holocaust analogy was even dumber and horribly misguided.

Nor is she a team player in the House Republican Conference. In March of 2024, she tried to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) after he pushed through a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown during an election year. Her motion to vacate was tabled in a bipartisan vote. She pulled the same stunt two months later, after Johnson advanced a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. That time she was able to force a floor vote on her motion to vacate, but it was defeated 359-43. Neither of these efforts to get rid of Johnson had a prayer of succeeding, but they did garner Greene friendly coverage on CNN. Moreover, her failure to oust Johnson still rankles, as this excerpt from her official statement reveals:

During the longest shutdown in our nation’s history, I raged against my own Speaker and my own party for refusing to proactively work diligently to pass a plan to save American healthcare and protect Americans from outrageous overpriced and unaffordable health insurance policies. The House should have been in session working everyday to fix this disaster, but instead America was forced fed disgusting political drama once again from both sides of the aisle … With that has brought years of nonstop never ending personal attacks, death threats, lawfare, ridiculous slander and lies about me, that most people could never withstand even for a day.

Greene desperately wants her constituents in Georgia’s 14th District, and the American public at large, to see her as one of the few principled members of the House, but that pose is undermined by the effective date of her resignation. Why did she select Jan. 5, 2026? Why not leave immediately? As the Washington Post points out, “That’s two days after she crosses the five-year threshold required to qualify for a lifetime congressional pension.” Maybe she’s not so different from the politicians she detests.” That means, despite her largely ineffectual time in the House and the ridiculous posturing to which we have all been subjected, she will continue to greedily guzzle from the taxpayer trough. That is the Marjorie Taylor Greene New Deal.

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