Today’s Flashpoint: Marjorie Taylor Greene

In November, the previously unknown Marjorie Taylor Greene was elected to Georgia’s open 14th Congressional District seat in a landslide. Now, after being in office less than a month, she is the object of a hate campaign by the Democrats, who are demanding that she be stripped of all committee assignments, and preferably kicked out of the House. It is reported that the Democrats’ press arm is trying to make Greene the face of the Republican Party.

What exactly has she done? Greene’s Facebook page apparently is a disaster. Even before the election, Politico investigated Greene on behalf of the Democratic Party and found Facebook videos that expressed “racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views.” That was Kevin McCarthy’s characterization, not Nancy Pelosi’s, and Greene was denounced last June by the Republicans’ House leadership. But Georgia’s voters apparently were unimpressed.

More offenses have come to light. Six days ago, CNN reported breathlessly:

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows.

This is based on Greene’s having “liked” comments on her Facebook page that accused Democrats like Nancy Pelosi of treason, and contemplated the penalties therefor. So she is in the same category with a great many Democrats, who baselessly accused President Trump of treason for four years. While some of what Greene did is obviously indefensible, CNN’s perspective is quite different from ours. Thus:

In one Facebook post from April 2018, Greene wrote conspiratorially about the Iran Deal, one of former President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievements.

Heh. I am on Greene’s side on this one. She gave this quote to CNN:

Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages. Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views. Especially the ones that CNN is about to spread across the internet.

It is hard to take that response seriously. Still, I suspect that Greene’s main offense is her stalwart defense of President Trump, and her vote, along with many other House members, to reject the Electoral College ballots of two states. It is her unabashed Trumpism that the Democrats are most eager to discredit.

Greene is already facing calls to leave the House for her role in fanning the flames of the Capitol insurrection earlier this month after she objected to the election certification process and falsely insisted that Trump would remain president.

After Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez called on Greene to be expelled from the House for her role in the insurrection, Greene condemned the violence at the Capitol and falsely accused “Antifa/BLM terrorism” and Democratic politicians of stoking the insurrection.

“Insurrection.” Right. Led by the leftist with the fur hat and the horns.

As far as I know, because it wasn’t just a “like” but rather her own post–at least, this is what has been reported–Greene’s worst offense was when she attributed California’s wildfires to a space ray controlled by the Rothschilds. Or something like that. It could be a joke, except that it isn’t funny. So I assume she more or less meant it.

So, to put it mildly, Marjorie Greene is not our sort of Republican. Still, what to make of the Democrats’ campaign against her? A few observations:

1) The Democrats want Greene expelled (or, at a minimum, barred from serving on any committees) because of things she said before she took office–statements or “likes” that were indisputably protected speech. I don’t know whether there is any precedent for such a sanction. I doubt it. It seems to me that such extreme measures should be reserved for actions taken while serving in the House, not previously as a private citizen. The grounds for expelling Greene were mostly known before the election, and yet the voters in Georgia’s 14th District elected her, overwhelmingly. I don’t think it is up to the Democratic majority in the House to determine that the voters were wrong.

2) The worst of Greene’s statements suggest that she may be anti-Semitic. If true, that is a terrible thing. But if we are going to expel anti-Semites from the House, Greene is hardly first on the list. Democrats like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and no doubt others if we assiduously study their Facebook pages, are way ahead of her in line. Again, the question of when anti-Semitic statements have been made is relevant. Greene has been spotless since taking her seat in the House, while Omar and Tlaib have used their pulpit as representatives to spew hate. So, if the House is willing to expel Omar and Tlaib or bar them from committees, next we can take up the question of Marjorie Greene. Not before.

3) The Democrats’ case against Marjorie Greene largely consists of the claim that she is a conspiracy theorist. Fine. If we are going to expel representatives who promoted conspiracy theories, let’s start with the Democrats who propounded the insane conspiracy theory that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 presidential election. Once all of those Democrats have been expelled or deprived of their committee assignments–that covers pretty much all Democrats, including the House leadership–we can take up the question of whether Marjorie Greene promoted unfounded conspiracy theories.

4) The Democrats suggest that Marjorie Greene has somehow been a proponent of violence. That claim is doubtful at best, but it is true of quite a few Congressional Democrats. How many have accused President Trump of treason, the penalty for which is death? How many have condoned, and even encouraged, violent Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots that have killed somewhere between 25 and 30 people?

I would be curious to know, too, how many Congressional Democrats have “liked” others’ violent social media posts–the standard that is being applied to Greene. How many “liked” one or more of the tens of thousands of tweets by Democrats that included the hashtag #Rape Melania? That hashtag trended with more than 32,000 tweets. How many Democratic members of Congress liked or retweeted one or more of those 32,000? Any chance Politico will look into that?

5) The question of committee assignments is a good one. Nothing in Greene’s past suggests that she is unfit to serve on the Education and Labor or Budget Committee. On the other hand, we have the grotesque example of Eric Swalwell, who carried on an affair with a Chinese spy while serving on the House Intelligence Committee. And, not only that, he lied to the American people about secret documents to which he had privileged access. Once Swalwell has been expelled from the Intelligence Committee, on which, astonishingly, he still serves, I am willing to take up other cases. Until then, forget it.

The case of Marjorie Greene is an interesting one. On one hand, we obviously wish that Georgians had elected someone else. On the other hand, the Democrats’ campaign against her is cynical and hypocritical, and offers an opportunity to expose the Democrats’ own corruption of the House. Which I have tried to do in this post.

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