Same As It Ever Was

Marjorie Taylor-Greene is not the problem with the Republican Party. She is the explanation.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.

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Last night I read this article in the New York Times Magazine that excerpts Robert Draper’s new book, “Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind.” The piece is titled “The Problem of Marjorie Taylor Greene” and addresses “her metamorphosis over the past year and a half from pariah to a position of undeniable influence” within the Republican Party.

In Draper’s telling, Greene has risen to prominence by following the same trajectory as Donald Trump. Like the former president, she is thin-skinned, aggrieved, dishonest, clueless, bombastic, and conspiracy-addled. She will literally say anything, no more how offensive it might be. As Draper puts it, “Greene’s political operation is committed to the goal of reflexively demonizing nearly anyone and anything she opposes, regardless of what it costs her.”

He also notes that “Greene has gone from the far-right fringe of the GOP ever closer to its establishment center without changing any of her own beliefs; if anything, she has continued to find more extreme ways to express them.” Once dismissed as a crank or an electoral mistake, Green has become a star within the GOP — a prolific fundraiser, a much sought-after surrogate by Republican candidates, and someone courted by Republican Congressional leaders.

It’s an interesting article and worth reading. But it frustrated me — not because of the subject matter (Greene is clearly toxic and awful) but because it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

Indeed, I wrote about Greene last May and came to many of the same conclusions as Draper.

Green is as crazy, clueless, and conspiracy-addled as Trump, and while most humans have a filter between their brain and their mouth, she does not … Ask yourself, is there any outlandish act that would make you say, “Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone off the deep end?”

… As the GOP moves further and further to the political extremes and makes culture war politics the focal point of their political appeal, Greene, by just being herself and violating every appropriate social and cultural norm, has positioned herself to take full advantage. She might be crazy, but we should have all learned by now that in the Republican Party, that has the potential to be her best asset.

Greene, I wrote, “has the perfect mix of crazy and clueless to be a rising Republican star.” In a party dominated by Donald Trump for the past seven years, nothing about Greene’s ascent is surprising or even that revelatory. Draper’s piece is yet another depiction of the GOP’s descent into moral oblivion and the rise of narcissistic charlatans like Greene. This same story has been written numerous times about Trump. More recently, you could substitute Lauren Boebert or Matt Gaetz, or Kari Lake. Rinse and repeat. In seven years, nothing has changed. Liberals tut-tut and shake their heads, but the political landscape remains unchanged.

Perhaps my views are influenced by the fact that I follow politics more closely than the average citizen. But these kinds of pieces are regurgitating conventional wisdom that feels increasingly outdated. At this point, the surprising story is not that people like Greene keep influencing Republican politics; it would be if a normal, non-conspiracy-addled Republican somehow emerged. I don’t mean this so much as a criticism of Draper. It’s important to tell the story of how the GOP has gotten to its current toxic place. But there is still a weird element of shock and amazement among the pundit class that the Republican Party has gotten to this point — not acceptance that this is our new political reality.

We need to stop treating politicians like Greene as if they are outliers or unusual — or act as though the Republican Party losing their collective minds is surprising. Her rise through the ranks of the GOP is entirely predictable. Even if Donald Trump disappeared tomorrow, people like Greene would continue to dominate the party and enjoy broad support. There’s no white knight who is going to emerge out of the ether and turn the clock back on the modern GOP. This is who and what the Republican Party has become, and there is no reason to expect it to change anytime soon.

Indeed, it’s only in the last few paragraphs where Draper really gets to the nub of the issue — that the incentive structure within the Republican Party only leads in one direction. Speaking of Trump and Greene, Draper notes the following:

Both derived their outsize influence in the G.O.P. from their ability to command the airspace of the right-wing ecosystem. They achieved this not simply by being the most outrageous voices in the room but also by being more outrageous today than they were the day before. They were competing against themselves and against their adoring mimics. Their rhetorical one-upmanship was increasingly dark and violent. At a Trump rally in Michigan on Oct. 1, the former president claimed, “Despite great outside dangers, our biggest threat remains the sick, sinister and evil people from within our country.” Greene, as part of Trump’s warm-up act, was willing to get even more ominously specific: “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they have already started the killings.”

Such was the dangerous game of relevancy that Greene was pursuing. In victory, her voice might well become drowned out amid the growing chorus of MAGA supplicants. Impeach Biden? When she first proposed it in January 2021, eyes rolled. Now it was all but a given that a G.O.P. House majority would seize upon some rationale to swiftly begin impeachment proceedings. Democrats were not just radical socialists but Communists? Greene had begun making this assertion about Democratic members of Congress back in June 2021. Now even the National Republican Congressional Committee — the House G.O.P.’s official political organization — has solicited donations warning of creeping Communism under Pelosi’s Democrats.

Greene’s message was prevailing. What her inflammatory rhetoric might consume or ignite, and whether that would bring her ever closer to the center of power or lead to her being cast out, was yet to be known. “Part of my problem is,” she said quietly as her S.U.V. rolled through northwest Georgia, “I’ve been too early.”

Where I slightly disagree with Draper is the notion that there’s any real doubt about Greene’s political future. I once joked on Twitter that while we’re all laughing now about Greene, it won’t be so funny when she is the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. I wasn’t really joking. Greene might not end up as the 2024 nominee, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she is one day a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. In fact, I expect it.

Greene is not the disease; she’s a symptom of a political party whose rank-and-file members embrace candidates who are bigoted, outrageous, inflammatory, and unpleasant. That’s what Republican voters want, and it’s what they’re going to keep getting. Politicians are not driving this “mass delusion”; it’s the voters. The only chance that Greene gets supplanted is if someone even crazier comes along. The GOP is the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s high time we recognized it.