Whatever one’s views about Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, anybody who cares about the democratic process should be alarmed by the effort to use the courts to prevent her from running for office based on her rhetoric in the run-up to the January 6 Capitol riot.
Preventing somebody from seeking office — and, effectively, depriving citizens of the ability to vote for a candidate they would otherwise want to — is a serious matter. There are certain requirements for running for office (age and residency requirements, getting enough signatures to meet whatever petition standards exist, and so forth), and it would be legitimate to keep somebody off the ballot for not meeting them. But what is happening with Greene is a different matter and would set a horrible precedent, in which somebody’s public statements can be used as a means to prevent that person from running for office.
Greene’s statements ahead of the January 6 riot may have been reckless, and they may even have egged on some of the rioters. But that is a far cry from somebody who actively tried to plan an insurrection, break into the Capitol, or engage in violence. And the threshold for preventing somebody from enjoying the right to run that they would otherwise have should be quite high.
There are plenty of reasons to want to see Greene go, and voters who don’t want her as a representative have other options. On the main site, Dan McLaughlin has an interview with her Republican challenger, Jennifer Strahan, that is well worth reading.
But if critics of Greene cannot beat her at the ballot box, the solution should not be to get a court to remove her from the ballot for illegitimate reasons.