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The first time Republicans toppled their own speaker during this Congress, it wasn’t a particularly edifying spectacle, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is reaching for new lows.
To paraphrase Marx: First as a farce, then as a more preposterous farce.
Greene made her anti-Mike Johnson case on Tucker Carlson’s show last week, and it was — as you’d expect — a stew of conspiratorial thinking and sophomoric ranting.
You might say the anti-Johnson forces aren’t sending their best, but such is the weakness of their case that MTG is the best they’ve got.
There’s a serious case against funding Ukraine, based on the scarcity of our matériel and the geostrategic preeminence of Asia over Europe, but Greene and her friendly and encouraging interlocutor didn’t come within a hundred miles of it.
Greene complained that in the space of a couple months, Johnson has gone from a good Christian conservative to being indistinguishable from Nancy Pelosi.
Put aside the rank and grossly unfair exaggeration; what might have happened to change Johnson’s view of his role in Congress?
Would it have something to do with the fact he went from a backbencher with no responsibility to the leader of a narrow, fractious majority that, unless it can show some minimal ability to govern, is headed straight to the political dustbin?
Just asking questions …
Obviously, it’s one thing to inveigh against spending deals when what you say or do doesn’t matter much; it’s another to be the one who has to decide whether to lead your party into a shutdown fight it will definitely lose, blighting its political prospects for no good reason.
Similarly, Johnson should feel a responsibility to at least get a Ukraine package to a vote.
There’s a bipartisan majority in both chambers of Congress in favor of sending more aid to Ukraine, and Johnson is the one standing in the way.
If he doesn’t move and Ukraine subsequently collapses on the battlefield, he will have played an outsize role in the defeat of an ally at the hands of a US adversary.
That’s something to think about.
Greene, who has nothing if not an inquiring mind, speculated it is really that Johnson might be getting blackmailed.
It’s not clear what this insinuation is supposed to be about.
Johnson is an evangelical Christian attorney who has not, as far as anyone can tell, lived a life conducive to creating material for a blackmailer.
What did Johnson do: Mess up a citation in a brief 10 years ago? Miss a filing deadline once?
On the question of Ukraine, Greene and Carlson are self-professed nationalists who apparently have no idea why people might want to defend their homeland.
Greene said supporters of the war in the West care most about “murdering” Ukrainians, a bizarre way to characterize support for a war of self-defense.
As if we would be doing Ukraine a favor by letting it get conquered and subjected by a predatory neighbor.
If this is the standard, every leader who has ever resisted a foreign invasion has engaged in the “murder” of his or her own people.
If only Joan of Arc hadn’t been party to the murder of so many Frenchmen as she tried to expel the English in the Hundred Years’ War, and if only Elizabeth I hadn’t murdered so many British sailors in the course of checking the Spanish Armada.
Or, to extend the logic further, the French in World War I when they were a bulwark against Wilhelmine Germany? Reckless warmongers.
The French in World War II when they capitulated to Nazi Germany quickly? Admirable realists and humanitarians.
Carlson, as he often does, made much of the Kyiv government’s actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Whether you agree with what Ukraine has done or not, it is relevant to know that the church is a cat’s-paw of Moscow — although, of course, that wasn’t mentioned.
Greene went on to say that it violates “every tenet of our Christian faith” to aid Ukraine, and people who support Ukraine can’t even call themselves Christians.
That the United States should feel a moral compulsion to sit by and watch authoritarian states threaten the European order in pursuit of a neo-imperial and anti-Western agenda is, shall we say, an interesting interpretation of the word of God.
Doing a little somnology from afar, Greene also noted that Johnson is always complaining he’s tired and only getting three hours of sleep.
Since she, too, has been very busy in her life but always gotten seven or eight hours of sleep a night, she believes this shows Johnson must have a guilty conscience that’s keeping him up.
(Carlson thanked her for making this “deep point.”)
Maybe Johnson’s sleep is disturbed by the thought his majority is so small that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene matters.
And who can blame him?
Twitter: @RichLowry