Well, every once in a while, the New York Times gets something right, and this rare time it has to do with a very interesting topic: Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Many wonder, how the heck did these two random souls, who appear to be on opposite ends of the spectrum, manage to come together in such a big, and powerful way? Honestly, it shocked a lot of people to see feisty fighter MTG standing there sticking up for swamp rat Kevin McCarthy. But when this first went down, I was reminded of some very interesting tweets that MTG had put out that I think explains what’s been going on. We reported on this back in December. Here’s what we said:
Marjorie Taylor Greene has given everyone a really interesting update, as we get ready for the Republicans to take over the House next month. As we all know, there’s a lot of infighting going on with McCarthy, who wants to be leader, and many of us (me included) would prefer he didn’t. McCarthy is not an America First warrior. He’s a wishy-washy establishment guy who tries to ride both sides of the fence, and does his fair share of wheeling, dealing, and backstabbing in the shadows. But – and this is a big, and annoying “but,” we don’t have a good plan to replace him. Nobody who can truly lead the party has stepped up, so sadly McCarthy likely needs to stay in place for now. But this has to be it, and we also need to apply a lot of pressure on him to do OUR BIDDING, not his, McConnell’s, or Biden’s.
In the meantime, MTG took to Twitter where she shared some updates that I thought you’d find interesting:
Here’s what she said:
I have a vision of a Republican Party that truly serves the American people and our many great needs. Our House GOP conference all suffered together so much in the past two years and many House Republicans have changed and moved to the right, but the base doesn’t know yet.
The Senate Republicans are another story & the 18 Senators that voted for the Democrats $1.7 trillion omnimonster are the Uniparty, 36% of Republican Senators. While only 4% of House Republicans voted for it, 2 of them are traitors (Cheney & Kinzinger).
The base will no longer tolerate Uniparty Republicans, which are viewed as America Last, and I have been making that clear inside our conference while the base has been making it loud & clear on the outside. This must continue in order to keep our conference moving right.
It should also be pointed out Republicans won the House majority, but not the Senate. That’s because many House Republicans fought Biden & the Democrat’s agenda while the McConnell Republican Senators helped pass Biden’s agenda. Voting records & election results are proof.
Many House Republicans learned for the first time after J6 what it’s like to not have support from K Street and big corporations bc they refused to donate for much of the past two years. This was a good lesson in many ways because
while Republicans were tossed to the side by K Street & Big Corporate bc of all the woke agenda bs and insurrection lies, many House Republicans learned they don’t need K Street and Big Corporate like they need them. We won the House after being shunned by them.
Now K Street & Big Corporate are trickling back only bc House R’s take the majority in January. The most important thing the base can do is to make sure your support & voice to House Republicans is stronger than K Street lobbyist & Big Corporate.
DC is open and the base should start doing citizen lobbying because it’s the People’s House. Call ahead to Member’s offices, make an appointment, and plan a trip. Bring your friends. Be professional, be polite, and enjoy it. Make the Republican Party America’s Party.
I think it’s safe to say, one of those people MTG was referring to who had moved a lot more to the right is Kevin McCarthy.
And the New York Times kinda confirms that, with this piece they did on MTG and Kevin, and the bond they now share.
Days after he won his gavel in a protracted fight with hard-right Republicans, Speaker Kevin McCarthy gushed to a friend about the ironclad bond he had developed with an unlikely ally in his battle for political survival, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“I will never leave that woman,” Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, told the friend, who described the private conversation on the condition of anonymity. “I will always take care of her.”
Such a declaration from Mr. McCarthy would have been unthinkable in 2021, when Ms. Greene first arrived on Capitol Hill in a swirl of controversy and provocation. A former QAnon follower who had routinely trafficked in conspiratorial, violent and bigoted statements, Ms. Greene was then widely seen as a dangerous liability to the party and a threat to the man who aspired to lead Republicans back to the majority — a person to be controlled and kept in check, not embraced.
But in the time since, a powerful alliance developed between Ms. Greene, the far-right rabble-rouser and acolyte of former President Donald J. Trump, and Mr. McCarthy, the affable fixture of the Washington establishment, according to interviews with 20 people with firsthand knowledge of the relationship, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it.Their political union — a closer and more complex one than has previously been known — helps explain how Mr. McCarthy rose to power atop a party increasingly defined by its extremes, the lengths to which he will go to accommodate those forces, and how much influence Ms. Greene and the faction she represents have in defining the agenda of the new House Republican majority.
“If you’re going to be in a fight, you want Marjorie in your foxhole,” Mr. McCarthy said. Both he and Ms. Greene agreed to brief interviews for this article. “When she picks a fight, she’s going to fight until the fight’s over. She reminds me of my friends from high school, that we’re going to stick together all the way through.”
It is a relationship born of political expediency but fueled by genuine camaraderie, and nurtured by one-on-one meetings as often as once a week, usually at a coffee table in Mr. McCarthy’s Capitol office, as well as a constant stream of text messages back and forth.
Mr. McCarthy has gone to unusual lengths to defend Ms. Greene, even dispatching his general counsel to spend hours on the phone trying to cajole senior executives at Twitter to reactivate her personal account after she was banned last year for violating the platform’s coronavirus misinformation policy.
Ms. Greene, in turn, has taken on an outsize role as a policy adviser to Mr. McCarthy, who has little in the way of a fixed ideology of his own and has come to regard the Georgia congresswoman as a vital proxy for the desires and demands of the right-wing base that increasingly drives his party. He has adopted her stances on opposing vaccine mandates and questioning funding for the war in Ukraine, and even her call to reinvestigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to show what she has called “the other side of the story.”Mr. McCarthy’s agenda, Ms. Greene said, “if he sticks to it, will easily vindicate me and prove I moved the conference to the right during my first two years when I served in the minority with no committees.”
I hope MTG is right. I think she’s a loyal and trusting woman, and we should give her plan shot.
Let’s see what Kevin can do. Who knows, maybe he’ll prove a lot of us wrong.
I’d be okay with that.
This post originally appeared on WayneDupree.com.