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Kevin McCarthy on Marjorie Taylor Greene: 'I will never leave that woman' [1]
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Date: 2023-01-23
Greene initially distrusted McCarthy, believing allies who told her that he had conspired with Democrats to strip her of committee assignments. But starting from that point, it was the House minority leader who assiduously worked to court the first-term member with no committee assignments, rather than the reverse. Though he would call her “to the principal’s office,” as she put it, for conversations after she did things like speak at a white nationalist event or spread conspiracy theories, McCarthy never tried to punish her and kept his public criticism of her muted.
That approach bore fruit for McCarthy when Greene went to him for help after Twitter banned her personal account for spreading coronavirus misinformation. He gave her that help, with his general counsel spending hours on the phone with Twitter executives making Greene’s case. It didn’t work at the time, but it showed Greene the lengths McCarthy was willing to go to for her. What really convinced her of McCarthy’s support, though, was hearing from former Rep. Devin Nunes that McCarthy had threatened Democrats with retaliation if they stripped Greene of her committee assignments. (McCarthy has delivered that retribution, announcing he’d block Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee.)
Greene wanted to move House Republicans to the right. McCarthy knew he needed the far right to attain his personal ambition, having concluded that his Republican predecessors, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, had made a strategic error in isolating far-right members. But the most important thing the Times reveals is what we’ve been saying all along: Extremists control the House Republican conference. Despite the official imbalance in their status favoring McCarthy, the reality is that Greene had the power.
And by helping him get what he wanted, not just through her own vote (or 15 votes, in the end) for McCarthy to be speaker, but by giving other far-right House members the ability to tell constituents, “Well, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene are standing with Kevin McCarthy. And so am I,” Greene won McCarthy’s everlasting “I will never leave that woman … I will always take care of her” devotion. To be sure, McCarthy’s loyalty will extend only as far as his assessment of what benefits his personal ambitions, but that is going to be with Greene and the far right of his party for the foreseeable future.
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