Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has warned her party that it will lose the House in next year’s midterms if it does not do more to help American citizens address the cost of living.
“I can’t see into the future, but I see Republicans losing the House if Americans are continuing to go paycheck-to-paycheck,” Greene told Semafor as the U.S. government remains mired in shutdown after almost three weeks, with no end to the deadlock in sight and federal workers going unpaid.
Alluding to voters struggling with record-high credit card debit, she said: “They’ll definitely be going into the midterms looking through the lens of their bank account.”
The MAGA politician also criticized her party’s strategy of calling repeated votes on their short-term spending bill, calling it “a complete failure,” and questioned its leadership’s refusal to negotiate healthcare reforms with Democrats, who have made securing concessions on insurance premiums a key principle.
“That is something I’m really disgusted with,” she said. “It’s an America Last strategy, and I don’t know whose strategy that is, but I don’t think it’s a good one.”
Greene has repeatedly broken with her party this year, particularly House Speaker Mike Johnson and notably with regard to the ongoing calls to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, but insists she remains loyal to President Donald Trump.
“Any president, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican president, they’re in a cone of information, the information is siloed, and it’s coming from their advisers,” she told Semafor.
“Everyone keeps saying I’ve changed, and I’m saying, ‘No, I haven’t changed,’ I’m staying focused on America First, and I’m urging my party to get back to America First.
“I actually ran for Congress in 2020 angry with Republicans in Congress – which is pretty much where I’m at now again… I’m mad about a lot of things and I’m not going to stop talking.”
Her sudden independent streak – which has also seen her break with the GOP on foreign policy pertaining to Ukraine and Gaza – has come as something of a shock from a populist who once cheerily wore a red “Trump Was Right About Everything” baseball cap and made repeated attempts to impeach Joe Biden.
Such has been her about-turn, which challenges the idea that the Republican Party is entirely beholden to the whims of Trump, that The Atlanta-Journal Constitution recently ran an article headlined: “I was wrong about Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
“Even if you don’t agree with Greene on everything – or even most things – you have to admire her willingness in this moment to say what is true, even when other Republicans refuse to,” wrote columbist Patricia Murphy. “Maybe it’s career suicide, or maybe it’s leadership.”
Pundits attempting to guess Greene’s motives have suggested that she might be seeking to position herself as the next true leader of Trump’s “America First” movement or seek revenge for the president blocking her from running for the Senate in order to maintain their party’s slim majority in the House of Representatives.
Jeff Timmer of the anti-Trump conservative group the Lincoln Project recently told The Guardian her rebellion “can be attributed more to a woman scorned than the evolution of human goodness in Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
He added: “They didn’t want her to run; she’s getting a pound of flesh. ‘You wanted to put your thumb on me and thought I’d just play the loyal soldier? Well, I’m going to defy you on some key things like the Epstein files or healthcare and Medicaid.’”
