So after Tuesday night's meeting with Marjorie Taylor Greene, McCarthy wavered for hours and finally decided to accept a half-assed quasi-apology from her and call it a day. Except today there will be a floor vote and swing district Republicans are in an awful situation of either offending the crackpot GOP base by voting to remove her or offending independents and moderates by voting not to remove her. The DCCC already showed how they plan to tie every Republican in a swing district right to her and her insane, bigoted, dangerous remarks.
I doubt there will be less than a dozen Republican votes for the Democratic resolution by Wasserman Schultz to kick her off her committees. I'll guess Adam Kinzinger (IL), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Peter Meijer (MI), Nancy Mace (SC), maybe Young Kim (FL), Fred Upton (MI), Jaime Herrera Butler (WA)... that's about the only ones who come to mind and even that's a stretch. I wonder what Liz Cheney is thinking tonight, but I bet she's too scared to vote aye.
CNN reported last night that "Greene has allied herself with Trump, and many House Republicans say she shouldn't be punished for views expressed before she was an elected member of Congress-- even as lawmakers in both parties are alarmed at revelations that she suggested school massacres were staged events and made many other shocking and racist claims." Many extremists gave her >a standing ovation at the sparsely-attended Republican meeting yesterday where she made the fake apology.
McCarthy's confused, indecisive response and vapid statement "is unlikely to calm any fears among GOP members, who are growing nervous that his lack of action could embolden fringe members in the conference, damage the party's reputation and ultimately serve as a long-term distraction that will endanger their ability to win back the House in 2022." Polling on Greene, Boebert and Cawthorn is horrible-- approvals, respectively, of 13%, 10% and 11%.
When Greene was handed committee assignments weeks ago, the thinking among members and leadership was that it would provide the congresswoman a chance to prove she could do the work and move past her conspiracy-theory ridden past.
The thinking-- before it was resurfaced that she'd harassed a Parkland survivor on Capitol Hill and argued the shooting was a false flag event-- was that the House Committee on Education and Labor would put her under the tutelage of Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican with a reputation for running a tight ship and standing up against colleagues who step out of line. Greene was then put on Budget where the top Republican, Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, had a reputation for helping new members understand the intricacies of how Congress worked.
As more and more information about Greene's past came out and as the congresswoman showed no remorse, the issue of keeping her on the committees appears to have become untenable.
Following his meeting with Greene on Tuesday, McCarthy summoned the powerful Steering Committee for a late-night meeting. The GOP steering panel can remove Republican House members from their committee posts, but two officials with direct knowledge of the meeting told CNN that the committee did not make a decision as of Tuesday night.
During his meeting with Greene, McCarthy asked if she would apologize for her past comments and views, which she did not agree to, a person with knowledge of the matter told CNN. Another person familiar with their conversation also said that McCarthy provided a slew of options to her, including that she could show remorse and apologize.
McCarthy and the steering committee also discussed other options, including forcing her off just the Education Committee but letting her stay on the Budget Committee, according to a person with knowledge of the talks.
But, as one senior Republican told CNN, McCarthy "shit the bed." A GOP operative said "There’s no other way to slice this: McCarthy completely screwed this up and threw the conference under the bus in the process. It’s the job of the leader to protect members from bad floor votes. He could’ve dealt with this a week ago and his inability to ever take a position allowed Democrats to make the decision for him and put our members in the absolute worse position possible." He wanted it both ways-- no punishment for Greene, just a "harsh critique." In his statement, he said "Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference. I condemn those comments unequivocally. I condemned them in the past. I continue to condemn them today. This House condemned QAnon last Congress and continues to do so today."
And Greene attacked him by name in an interview after the Tuesday night meeting with the Washington Examiner: "And Kevin McCarthy and all these leaders, the leadership, and everyone is proving that they are all talk and not about action and they're just all about doing business as usual in Washington. And so what's the difference between them and the Democrats? There isn't a difference," she hissed. When asked about losing her committee assignments she said she doesn't care: "[I]t doesn't hurt me at all, I think it's going to give me more time on my hands, I think, which is fantastic because then I can gain more support, I can help really get Republicans running in these primaries and elections in 2022."
In an interview for PBS former Senator (R-MO) said that "The worst thing is that we have become really kind of a grotesque caricature of what the Republican Party has traditionally been. We were founded as the party of the union, of holding the country together. And now we have got on this populist tack, which is very much us against them."
My friend Roland, who knows her well and was especially amused that she defended her comments that past school shootings were staged by stating that she had personal experience with a school shooting, said that when everyone else goes off to their committees, she'll be plotting to overthrow the government.
Republican Party Has Become The Insane Asylum Party!