Marjorie Taylor Greene and The Importance of the Fife Principle

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene swearing into congress by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. January 3rd, 2021.[Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

Normally in this type of theater production this is the time you would assemble the Greek chorus and we all sing along with all the angsty glee Rogers and Hammerstein can lyrically muster:

How do you solve a problem like Marjorie?
How do you catch a Q and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Marjorie?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!

Well, that last part is correct at least. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (Wackadoo-GA14) has utterly beclowned herself again and again before, during, and after her successful congressional run. And she is showing no signs of letting up, her notable achievements in her first two weeks in congress being wearing a “censored” facemask in the People’s House, filing farcical Articles of Impeachment against President Biden, having a yell-off in the halls of congress with Rep. Cori Bush (MO-01) along with a Twitter spat, and generally doing Marjorie Taylor Greene things at ever-increasing intervals and volume. Now, with her elevated position of being the most objectionable member of the GOP caucus — no small feat in this congress — she finds her old social media past and activities coming back to haunt her.

Karen Tumulty opines thusly in The Washington Post:

Before she was elected last year, QAnon devotee Greene made a name for herself by spreading bonkers conspiracy theories, including that the school shooting tragedies in Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla., were staged.

She has also embraced another one claiming that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton murdered a child during a satanic ritual and drank her blood.

And they just keep coming. Newly unearthed are social media postings in which Greene appeared to endorse, through likes and shares and comments, the idea of executing Democratic leaders. One of the posts she “liked” suggested getting rid of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with “a bullet to the head.” CNN’s KFile also found a 2019 video in which Greene harassed David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting who was making the rounds on Capitol Hill to advocate for gun control. The congresswoman-to-be shouted lies at the teen and called him “a coward” for not responding to her.

All of this has provoked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to let it be known through a spokesman that he finds her comments “deeply disturbing” and that he “plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them.”…the sad thing is, the Republican embrace of people like Greene and its tolerance of what she represents show the party no longer recognizes a line between what is and isn’t acceptable. They have made their bargain, and now they are stuck with it.

True enough but the “why” to this bargain is more instructive to the fact they did so. Tolerating lunacy is not new, for either political party, though the contrast here is stark and getting starker. The thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene is all of this was known before hand, and nothing here is new that couldn’t be found with a simple Google search. The Congresswoman is not shy at all in telling anyone and everyone who she is; that apparently a bunch of folks chose not to believe her is on them. Or they do agree with her. Or some combination thereof. Results are the same, regardless; the crazymaker is empowered and encouraged to not only continue to be a crazymaker, but to crank it to 11.

This situation needed the Fife principle. Old Barney was practically worthless as a deputy but his eternal wisdom of “Nip it in the bud” proves usual. If something is a problem, it doesn’t become less of a problem over time, because people just become more of what they are over time. Bad character is powerful inertia, and it takes something momentous indeed to stop its drift once it gets started doing ill deeds and misguided mischief.

Barney Fife:
Yeah, well, today’s eight-year-olds are tomorrow’s teenagers. I say this calls for action and now. Nip it in the bud. First sign of youngsters goin’ wrong, you got to nip it in the bud.

Andy Taylor:
I’m gonna have a talk with ’em. Now, what more do you want me to do?

Barney Fife:
Well, just don’t mollycoddle them.

Andy Taylor:
I won’t.

Barney Fife:
Nip it. You go read any book you want on the subject of child discipline and you’ll find that every one of them is in favor of bud-nippin’.

Now ensconced into her house seat, Rep. Greene will remain so until voted out in 2022 or removed. The latter is unlikely to happen unless she really does — God forbid — something impressively insane, and it would probably have to be criminally so as well, to be expelled from congress. Expulsion of a member has only happened five times in the entire history of the United States House of Representatives, a shockingly low number considering the rogues’ gallery that has trod the halls of congress. There is the supposedly pending GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy’s “talking to” but since he spent part of his week re-kissing the ring of Donald J. Trump, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath. For the man who saw his first attempt to become Speaker of the House derailed by ethics concerns, to do much more than pose here as he plots to take the gavel in 2022 is asking too much, as moral turpitude is not in his purview or a step on his ladder to success. Since the late Walter Jones isn’t here to bud-nip the new batch of ethically challenged GOPers the way he did McCarthy’s run at speaker, mollycoddling it is.

Which is the real rub here, not just with Marjorie Taylor Greene but the other crazymakers that have wiled their way into the halls of congress. Once elected, it is very hard to get leadership to do anything about them because from their point of view it hurts their power. McCarthy wants to be Speaker of the House and to do that he needs a majority. Despite his brief ranging off the Trump reservation to mildly place “some blame” on President Trump for the January 6th riot at the Capitol, his staged and released photo with the former president — the first major such PR move from the 45th president since leaving office — seems to have resettled the GOP House Leader. From McCarthy and other GOP leaders’ POV, the crazies are a price to be paid in order to have the passion, support, and dollars such folks bring to the table. The mass of people arrayed outside the capitol on January 6th isn’t a problem to be dealt with to them, it is a voting group to be harness, fundraising dollars to be tapped, and support to be cherished. While they will condemn the violence once pinned down to do so, folks like Kevin McCarthy’s real desire isn’t to disband the crowds carrying Trump flags, but that they were carrying McCarthy flags instead, or chanting for [insert congress critter of your choice here, they all want that], or have even a sliver of the devotion Trump managed to garner. But using Trump as an avatar to get him what he wants is almost as good for Kevin McCarthy, and many other Republican office holders will tread the same path to try and advance themselves.

And that is the bargain that is being made. With Donald J. Trump now a private citizen, a scramble for “what’s next” is underway in the GOP. The quickest, easiest way for most of the office holders is to try and grab the conductors chair of the Trump Train for themselves instead of blazing their own path. It won’t work, since there is only one Trump and even, he needed a confluence of events to merge to make him president, but they are going to try again because political ambition is rarely creative. And since this is a matter of necessity and not principle, what’s a few lunatic fringes getting under the edges of this peculiar Big Tent as long as the show goes on, eh?

What cravenness. It will blow up in the GOP’s faces, eventually. Power — like money, alcohol, and social media — just makes you more of what you already were. The latest crops of GOP miscreants who are causing headaches for the party are known entities that were going to be trouble. Lauren Boebert of Colorado who had a running list of arrests and run-ins for not being able to control her behavior is, shockingly, showing signs of not being able to control her behavior. Matt Gaetz of Florida continues to beclown himself as the star of his own inner reality show where he is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Not shocking that the feller who grew up in the Truman Show house and whose liege calls him “Rick” has problems with processing reality. Then there are the utterly unhinged Louis Gohmerts of the party, the Arizona looney twofer of Reps. Biggs and Gosar, who knows what 2022 might bring, and the list goes on and on.

As for Marjorie Taylor Greene, she’s busy scrubbing all those social media posts that she once used to try and get her name out to the world now that they are proving problematic as a “respectable” congresswoman. And no, congresswoman, citing a tweet where you like Maya Angelou isn’t going to cut it as cover. Even a wackadoo can sense when she is in trouble, it would seem. But don’t worry, there is nothing new under the sun, leopards don’t change their spots, and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world won’t be able to hold it together and toe the line for very long. The pressure of the limelight, or of re-election, or perhaps being redistricted, or her own ability to not be a functioning adult will conspire at some point to bring a period to the run-on sentence of crazy that is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I know that, because when she told me and the rest of the world who she is I took Maya Angelous’ advice and believed the congresswoman the first time. You should too.

There is no easy fix for a party that allows a crazymaker to join their ranks of elected officials. There is only prevention. Having not only failed to prevent, but actively encouraged Marjorie Taylor Greene and folks who find her particular brand of crazy attractive, the Republican Party purchased their ticket on this crazy train and now have to take the ride. Maybe next time they will heed the wise words of Deputy Fife and at the first sign of trouble Nip It. In. The. Bud.

Either way, don’t say you didn’t see it coming when Marjorie Taylor Greene and the others come tumbling down from the top of Mount Crazy and manage to take a few GOPers with them on the way. It’s the only way this story ends, the only way it can end: In disaster for not just the individual wackadoo, but the party that tolerated them thinking there was an advantage to be gained.

If you didn’t see it coming, that’s a you problem. You’ve been warned.