The Republican Party’s embrace of Donald Trump may have proven to be a Faustian bargain, but it was indeed an exchange. Sure, the GOP had to lose the moral high ground on issues ranging from sexual misconduct to corruption, but the former president had an actual set of policies (love them or hate them) to advance a coherent ideology. Maybe you think taking the deranged tweets, the storming of the Capitol, the winks and nods toward QAnon and the alt-right, and losing both chambers of Congress was worth getting the Abraham Accords disempowering Iran, a generation of originalist judges confirmed across the federal judiciary, landmark criminal justice reform, and transformational tax reform. Maybe you don’t. But there was a bargain, even if you believe it was a bad one.
Unlike Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene brings nothing to the table for Republicans except a whole lot of trouble. The QAnon-supporting congresswoman from Georgia has expressed quite a lot of other conspiracy theories about 9/11 trutherism, the Parkland, Florida, shooting being a false flag operation, and anti-Semitism, including blaming California wildfires on a secret Jewish laser beam in space. What she has not expressed is any sort of coherent policy agenda past promulgating the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Trump and trying to impeach President Biden because reasons.
Greene has spent the majority of her time in Congress repeatedly moaning about wearing a mask (3,600 coronavirus deaths were added yesterday to our total death toll of 436,780) and facing outrage from within her party for her relentless conspiracy theorizing and role in the storming of the Capitol. According to her email list that some sick schmuck subscribed me to, she’s more interested in vice-signaling that she’ll impeach Biden than any sort of actual policy that stands a chance in hell of winning a single vote across the aisle.
Legislators don’t much like legislating these days; the culture we’ve inculcated of politicians being more performance artists than agents of enacting actual policy means Greene isn’t exactly unique in her unseriousness. But Trump’s demagoguery had celebrity charm. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist demagoguery has social media smarts. Sen. Ted Cruz’s demagoguery has, shall we call it, just enough subtlety and sophistication not to offend the senses too wildly.
Greene has none, and if Republicans choose to embrace her, Democrats will gain a wildly powerful weapon in the war of whataboutism. Greene advances nothing but owning the libs, if you can call histrionic apoplexy over her delusions any sort of success, and she does not bring any sort of coherent policy agenda or popular appeal that can advance any part of the conservative agenda. If conservatives decide not to condemn and expunge a conspiratorial anti-Semite whose disregard for class or policy coherence is offensive to the intellect, we will regret it, and we will deserve it.
