MTG’s Boosterism for Democratic Talking Points Is Only Self-Serving

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s warmed-over Democratic talking points about the GOP’s utter heartlessness when it comes to healthcare don’t make any more sense when they come from a Republican’s mouth.

MTG’s Strange New Respect media tour of left-leaning venues took her to HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher over the weekend. There, the Republican congresswoman heaped scorn on the GOP for failing to give Democrats what they decided they wanted from the government shutdown only after they shut down the government.

“Here’s why I’m angry: the Democrats passed Obamacare, but yet, the Republicans have never done anything to correct the problems that exist with it,” Greene inveighed. “I blame my own party. That’s absolutely wrong.”

Greene has been hitting this monotonous note a lot recently. When she’s not casting aspersions on the GOP for being hypnotized by the mesmeric Israelis, she’s criticizing the “weak,” directionless Republican Party — primarily because its modest reluctance to contribute to America’s looming insolvency crisis is just downright mean. Unsurprisingly, Greene’s pivot to mouthing Democratic talking points has convinced plenty of Democrats of her fleeting utility.

But beyond basking in attention, it was Greene’s attack on Speaker Mike Johnson that betrayed the congresswoman’s true motives. Johnson “for a month now cannot give me a single policy idea,” she said, “and I’m angry about that.”

It’s telling that the “month” in question was a month in which Democrats used their “leverage” to shutter the government unless and until they got some concession from Republicans. Indeed, Democrats only settled on the notion that the GOP should help them undo the compromise to which they themselves consented when they sunset Obamacare’s subsidies this year to win moderate Democratic support for the so-called Inflation Reduction Act post hoc, after they resolved to use a clean government funding bill to muscle the GOP into handing their opponents a win of some sort. Obamacare’s affordability, or lack thereof, was not a feature of pro-shutdown Democratic rhetoric until later.

For his part, Johnson hasn’t lent any credence to Greene’s cynical maneuvering.

“Obviously, we won’t be on a conference call explaining all of our plans and strategies for health-care reform because they are leaked in real-time, literally, when I have a conference call with all my members, it’s tweeted out by journalists,” he told Fox News anchor Shannon Bream. “Marjorie knows that and she knows she can come into my office any day, at any hour, and I’ll lay out everything for her.”

He observed that “Democrats are the ones that created the system that is failing us,” and he noted that passively bankrolling a program that is ballooning in scope and cost in the absence of reforms is the Democratic Party’s platform. What he didn’t say in that interview that he has said repeatedly in other forums is that the GOP’s position is simple: first, reopen the government. Everything else comes second.

Greene isn’t on board with the Republican line on the shutdown because she is not on board with its leadership. Some have attempted to assign motives to Greene that render her heel turn something high-minded. She’s an economic populist, more MAGA than MAGA, and she’s merely burnishing those credentials, they’ll say. That’s too generous. Greene perceives the GOP to be on the back foot, and that has given her an opening she is exploiting to boost her own profile. If that means making herself a tool of the GOP’s left-of-center detractors in media, so be it.