Republicans are making a concerted effort to 'normalize' Marjorie Taylor Greene: conservative

10 January 2023

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has generated one controversy after another, from blaming “Jewish space lasers” for California wildfires to endorsing QAnon to calling for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to be executed. Regardless, Greene has become increasingly prominent in the Republican Party. And Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California welcomed her support during his uphill battle to become House speaker — an uphill battle he finally won on Friday night, January 6 after having lost no less than 14 roll-call votes.

McCarthy had to jump through countless hoops to get a group of holdouts, dubbed the “Never Kevin” Republicans, to vote for him for House speaker. And he finally prevailed on the 15th vote. But Greene was never part of the “Never Kevin” crowd and urged fellow MAGA Republicans to support him.

In an article published by The Bulwark on January 10, Never Trump conservative Mona Charen laments that Republicans — from McCarthy to Fox News — have been making a concerted effort to “normalize” Greene.

Charen, a veteran columnist who served as a speechwriter for First Lady Nancy Reagan during the 1980s, argues that Fox News is trying to “sanitize” Greene and portray her as “a mainstream figure, a serious politician” because she “played a significant role in elevating McCarthy to the speakership.”

“Things move fast,” Charen writes. “So cast your minds back only to 2021, when Mitch McConnell described Greene as a ‘cancer’ on the Republican Party and John Thune warned that the party had to draw some lines: ‘They have to decide who they want to be. Do they want to be the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility, free markets, peace through strength, and pro-life? Or do they want to be the party of conspiracy theories and QAnon?”

Charen notes that when Fox News’ Howard Kurtz conducted a “softball interview” with Greene on Sunday, January 8 as part of the “Fox purification ritual,” he gave her a chance to say that her pro-QAnon statements are in the distant past. But the conservative journalist stresses that Greene is still showing how extreme she is.

“Wasn’t it just in February 2022 — so far in the past — that Greene spoke at a conference sponsored by the white nationalist/fascist Nick Fuentes?” Charen observes. “That was also the month that she described the January 6th defendants as political prisoners and denounced ‘Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police’…. And wasn’t it in December 2022 — last month — that she told the New York Young Republican Club that if she and Steve Bannon had organized the January 6th insurrection, ‘We would have won. Not to mention, it would have been armed.’”

Greene, Charen warns, is “not a case of a politician who misspeaks or commits a gaffe and must make amends,” but rather, “has a disordered personality.”

“As a grown adult,” Charen notes, “she chased a teenager who had survived the Parkland school shooting down the street, harassing and berating him. She is drawn to hatred as a moth to a flame. She is the poison that courses through the veins of parts of the right — the vicious, reality-challenged right. If she is to be normalized by the GOP, it is the party, not she, that is changed.”

Charen adds, “No sooner did McCarthy achieve election on Friday night than Greene rushed to his side. They posed for a grinning photo. It was his first act as speaker.”

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