U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of the House’s most outspoken conservatives, told fellow Republican Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) during a podcast that Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) lacks the “full support to be Speaker” in the event the GOP retakes the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections.
“We know that Kevin McCarthy has a problem in our conference. He doesn’t have the full support to be Speaker,” Greene said while a guest on the “Firebrand with Matt Gaetz” podcast.
“He doesn’t have the votes that are there, because there’s many of us that are very unhappy about the failure to hold Republicans accountable, while conservatives like me, Paul Gosar, and many others just constantly take the abuse by the Democrats. The American people aren’t going to have it,” she added.
In particular, Greene took issue over the fact that the Democrat-controlled House leadership removed her and fellow Republican Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) from their committee assignments — without sufficient pushback from McCarthy, according to Greene.
“Number one, everyone saw me get stripped of committees as a brand new member of Congress, robbing my district of the ability to have representation working on committees. There was no action taken,” Greene said to Gaetz. “As a matter of fact, our leader did nothing to defend me, did nothing to stop it. Then we saw today Paul Gosar censured and then we saw him lose a committee, and this is another failure.”
Both lawmakers were punished for allegedly promoting violence against their conservative colleagues.
McCarthy has assured the public that Greene and Gosar will serve on committees if Republicans take back the House.
“They’ll have committees,” he said earlier this month. “They may have other committee assignments. They may have better committee assignments.”
Greene and Gaetz have not shied away from attacking fellow Republicans who they feel have strayed from the party’s principles. Gaetz famously traveled to Wyoming in January of this year to hold a rally at which he berated Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) for voting to impeach President Donald Trump.
Cheney was once chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the third highest-ranking member of her party in the House. But the blowback from her impeachment vote led to McCarthy supporting the widely demanded effort to remove her from the position, of which she was officially stripped on May 12 of this year. Cheney has since been appointed by House Democrats as vice chair of the chamber’s January 6th committee.
Greene has likewise taken aim at Republicans like Cheney. More broadley, the Georgia Republican vowed earlier this year to fund primary challenges against Republicans who voted for the Biden infrastructure bill.
With over $6 million raised since the beginning of January, Greene is one of the biggest fundraisers in the House outside of leadership.
A schism is taking place within the Republican Party as the base overwhelmingly pushes for more action on conservative and constitutional policies, including those that had been championed by President Trump. The party’s leadership is widely perceived to move slowly (or not at all) on these issues, causing a disconnect but also providing opportunity for a small group of firebrands who are willing to deliver a more Trumpian approach to politics.
The tension between the two factions within the GOP can also be seen in the Senate. Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who serves as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), indicated that he will use his position to financially support Republican incumbents in primaries — even when those races have a challenger endorsed by Trump.
Moreover, Scott has expressed his belief that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election legitimately, while Trump has asserted that he lost because of mass voter fraud.
“[T]his was a rigged election,” Trump has said. “Everybody knows it.”
On the Senate side, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the chamber’s minority leader, has become the face of the party’s establishment wing. McConnell has stated that he will not fight to impeach Biden.
McConnell has referred to Biden as his “old friend” and a “trusted partner.” In 2011, Biden appeared at the McConnell Center in Kentucky and said that the audience wanted “to see whether or not a Republican and Democrat really like one another. Well, I’m here to tell you we do.”
