The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Republicans in Congress are circling the wagons and shooting inward once again. This time the target seems to be Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene whose conservative credentials have earned her a very devout following — and with it an unlikely alliance of enemies. (RELATED: TAYLOR MILLARD: Republicans Fight Uphill Battle Reining In Off The Rails Agency)
Once the Georgia congresswoman took office, it didn’t take long for CNN’s KFile to swing into action and “discover” all the horrible things she had ever said. It’s a predictable playbook for the beleaguered network’s most scurrilous group of little bloggers (see #cnnblackmail) who make a habit out of going after conservative Republicans.
The orchestrated hit job provided all the ammo Nancy Pelosi needed to break protocol and remove Greene from her committee assignments. It was a brazen move usurping the power of respective party leaders and their steering committees to appoint committee assignments.
It would come back to haunt a trio of left-wing Democrats whose CNN-driven anti-Trump conspiracies were disproven time and again. No matter, at the time of Pelosi’s unprecedented power grab, Greene was in the political wilderness.
But minority leader Kevin McCarthy refused to throw her under the bus and she later backed him for speaker. For that, Greene has never been forgiven by her fellow House Freedom Caucus (HFC) members and last week they booted her from the group.
This is nuts.
First things first, Freedom Caucus members are not budget hawks — they are defense hawks who just teamed up with McCarthy to pass a massively bloated $874 billion NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) bill. It was Greene’s amendment that tried to strip out more Ukrainian military aid while American cities crumble and its border remains a sieve. It failed, so you’d think HFC members would vote no on ‘forever wars’ and fiscal mismanagement.
You’d be wrong, the caucus voted overwhelmingly for the bill with HFC Chair Scott Perry lauding the legislation, saying “We’re here to tell you today that this is a huge victory.”
The very same battle played out when I was in Congress. Armed Services Committee hardliners, who loathe the HFC, were only too happy to join forces with them nonetheless to undo sequestration and bust the budget. They boosted Pentagon spending from $549 to $716 billion while promising to zero-out all social spending increases.
Absolutely no one believed that 60 Senators would sign off on a huge ‘plus-up’ for the Pentagon without Chuck Schumer extracting a massive price for his favorite transfer programs. He did and the result was a series of continuing resolutions and 2,232-page omnibus spending bills — which I’m proud to say I voted against.
This is “bomb throwing” and, frankly, it’s fine when you’re in the minority and nothing conservative will get done anyway. But it’s sabotage in the majority when you’ve got a very short window for changing things, as I explained on these pages during the debt ceiling debacle.
Former Congressman Jason Lewis is the author of Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics and the Partisan Press. He also writes at jasonlewis.substack.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack page, which can be viewed here.
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