Republicans Should Have Easy Path in 2022, Except for McCarthy And His ‘Fringe Group’
Marjorie Taylor Greene called a "tear-down" project
Political history holds that Republicans ought to have an easy time retaking control of the House of Representatives — if not all of Congress — in next year's midterm elections.
After all, Democrats are holding on with a slim majority as it stands, after facing unexpected congressional losses in 2020.
And history bears out that when one party holds unified control of government — the White House and both chambers of Congress, as Democrats now do — the opposing party is set up for big gains in the next midterm elections.
This year, however, there is a big if hanging over that historical expectation. And nothing — or no one — personifies that caveat more than Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga).
Greene — she of the QAnon conspiracies, the comparisons of COVID vaccinations to the Holocaust, calling for violence or death against such Democratic leaders as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, and Jewish-owned space lasers being responsible for wildfires in California — is merely the most visible of congressional Republicans who hold many similar conspiracy theories and who staunchly back former president Donald Trump, to the extent of supporting and spreading his baseless “Big Lie,” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him due to massive Democratic fraud.
Many are believed to have been sympathetic to the deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
“In America, this is going to be important in the midterm elections; the Republicans think they have a pretty easy path to the majority. History would say that's true, except they have members like this and the Democrats are going to say, 'Put them in power, [and] this is what you get. Put them in power, you're putting Trump back in power,’” said CNN host John King. “… Defenders of [House Republican Leader Kevin] McCarthy also point out that his ability to deal with unwieldy members is limited, especially when it comes to Greene, who already had our committee assignments taken away by Democrats earlier this year.
“What leverage does he have? What tools does he have, said one GOP lawmaker? He talks to them a lot. He does what he can. He sits them down and makes clear what his expectations are. But there's only so much he can do,” King posits. “There's only so much you can do if your goal is make sure those people still vote for us. If your goal is this is about power more than anything else, he could try to expel them. He could take it further, adopt a two or three strikes rule. And if you keep crossing him, do more about it, but he won't.”
That kind of behavior won't win Republicans the voters that they need to win elections, according to Laura Barron-Lopez, White House correspondent for Politico.
“Yeah, there have been multiple times while Trump was in power that Republicans could have tried to sever the cord, could have tried to show more distance with him, whether it was the impeachment vote, whether it was the vote on the January 6 commission, which Republicans like [Senate Republican Leader Mitch] McConnell could have voted for and decided: ‘Let’s uncover whatever we can even if it leads all the way to the president, to the former president.’ They didn’t do that,” Barron-Lopez said. “They’ve decided time and time again that they want to keep that base, the base that Trump plays to, the base that Marjorie Taylor Greene plays to, which likes the Big Lie, which thinks that it’s true and thinks that Biden is illegitimate despite that being false, they want to keep them in the fold.
“And now the question is are they going to be able to grow beyond that base? Because they have to if they are going to win back, not just in 2022, but also potentially the presidency,” she added.
And then there's Greene herself.
There's no trying to reason with her, or change her ways, according to one prominent “Never Trumper” conservative commentator.
Rather, it's really a need for the Republican Party to rid itself of her to save itself, according to CNN commentator SE Cupp. Except that McCarthy refuses to do so, she said.
“There’s no point in rehabbing someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene. She’s not a rehab project. She’s a tear-down. Get rid of it and try to save your party,” Cupp said. “That is not a calculation Kevin McCarthy has had the courage to make. He has decided that keeping her and her base happy is more important than calling out what is very clearly, you know, obvious to the rest of us, as insane and, you know, white nationalism, anti-Semitism, QAnon conspiracies. Rather than do that, he’s preferred to keep her happy, keep the base happy.”
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