How Deranged Does A Candidate Have To Be To Call Himself "The Male Marjorie Traitor Greene?"

Soon All Republicans Will Be Vying For That Title

Click on MTG to hear her spewing racism for the racists

Las Vegas MAGA-Republican Sam Peters is running against incumbent Democrat Stephen Horsford in NV-04, a district that went from an R+1 partisan lean to a D+28 lean, suddenly the safest blue seat in the state. The current FiveThirtyEight forecast is that Horsford will be reelected 53.1% to 46.9%. Going into the final stretch, Horsford has $2,494,446 in his campaign account to Peters’ $165,018. The DCCC and its allies have spent almost $2 million dollars bolstering Horsford while the NRCC considers Peters an embarrassing crackpot who isn’t fit to serve in Congress and has spent exactly zero to help him floundering campaign. McCarthy’s SuperPAC has also spent zero on Peters, who they have given up for dead.

Too extreme for McCarthy and the NRCC? How is that even possible? Well, he has repeatedly referred to the insurrectionists and domestic terrorists who stormed the Capitol as “civically engaged American citizens exercising their constitutional freedoms.” And he has branded himself as a future member of the neo-Nazi House Freedom Caucus and as “the male Marjorie Traitor Greene.”

What about the female Marjorie Traitor Greene? Today, the Associated Press sent out a report by Lisa Mascaro making it clear that the recent outcast inside the party is now accepted as a top GOP leader and powerbroker. Normal people look at her and see a dangerous moron; Republicans looks at her and… it’s like looking in the mirror. Mascarowrote that when she “took her seat directly behind Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy, a proximity to power for the firebrand congresswoman that did not go unnoticed, as he unveiled the House GOP’s midterm election agenda in Pennsylvania. Days later, she appeared on stage warming up the crowd for Donald Trump, when the former president rallied voters in Michigan to cast ballots for Republicans, including for control of Congress. Once shunned as a political pariah for her extremist rhetoric, the Georgia congresswoman who spent her first term in the House stripped of institutional power by Democrats is being celebrated by Republicans and welcomed into the GOP fold. If Republicans win the House majority in the November election, Greene is poised to become an influential player shaping the GOP agenda, an agitator with clout.’ No. 1, we need to impeach Joe Biden. No. 2, We need to impeach Secretary Mayorkas. And No. 3, we should impeach Merrick Garland,’ Greene told The Associated Press outside the U.S. Capitol… I’m going to be a strong legislator and I’ll be a very involved member of Congress,’ she predicted. ‘I know how to work inside, and I know how to work outside. And I’m looking forward to doing that.’”

This is the outlook for the Republican Party in the Trump era, the normalizing of once fringe figures into the highest ranks of political power. It’s a sign of the GOP’s rightward drift that Greene’s association with extremists and nationalists, violent rhetoric and remarks about Jewish people have found a home in elected office. Her ascent brings into focus the challenge ahead for McCarthy, whose GOP ranks are filling with far-right political stars with the potential to play an oversized role in setting the policies, priorities and tone of the new Congress.

When the congresswoman says outlandish things— as she did at the Trump rally earlier this month claiming “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they’ve already started the killings”— few Republican leaders dare a public or private rebuke of such incendiary language. In this case, she was exaggerating two local incidents involving politics, one that ended tragically in a fatality.

Greene’s political currency stretches beyond her massive social media following and her ability to rake in sizable sums from donors. Her proximity to Trump makes her a force that cannot be ignored by what’s left of her mainstream GOP colleagues.

McCarthy’s allowance for Greene to sit front and center with leadership for the campaign rollout was not by accident but design. The Republican lawmakers in attendance celebrated her presence, calling it a sign of the GOP’s “big tent” that welcomes all comers. But Greene’s arrival also signaled a stark normalizing of the most extreme elements in the Republican Party.

…At that time, McCarthy called her comments about the Holocaust “wrong” and “appalling.” Greene later apologized.

In many ways, Greene’s arrival in the House traces the arc of the Republican Party’s rightward evolution from the Newt Gingrich revolution that brought conservatives to power in the 1994 election, to the “tea party” Republicans that regained the House majority in 2010.

…Not only does Greene want to impeach Biden and Cabinet officials, she is eager to conduct investigations, including into the origins of COVID-19.

Last month, Greene unveiled legislation that is another priority— her bill to prohibit some gender reassignment procedures on minors— flanked by a dozen Republican lawmakers and leaders in the conservative movement. Many of them praised the congresswoman for her work.

“I want to thank Marjorie Taylor Greene— who is soon to get her full legislative powers back, by the way,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Committee, who hugged her afterward.

“If this is the type of thing that you’re going to have the courage to do, I think that’s something everybody needs to understand,” Schlapp said.

McCarthy and Greene appear to have come to an understanding that they need each other. The leader needs Greene to come into the GOP fold rather than throw rocks from outside. She needs McCarthy’s blessing to regain committee assignments, enabling her to participate more fully in Congress and put her imprint on legislation.