Op-Ed: Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Exactly What Middle America Needs in Congress
Former Clinton strategist James Carville called Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene “white trash” after she called out President Joe Biden during a raucous State of the Union address.
If Greene is white trash, then I say thank God for it; that’s fabulous!
Greene’s recent interview with “60 Minutes” was a hilarious confrontation between the coastal elite and the working class of middle America that they hold in such contempt. In case you missed it, CBS’ Leslie Stahl was in typical form, imperious and vaguely condescending — although she was fairer to Greene than she has been to President Donald Trump.
The roughly 10-minute interview, clips of which have been flying around Twitter, had the supposed “gold standard of news magazines” totally caught off guard by what Americans really think.
An exasperated Stahl exclaimed, “[Democrats] are not pedophiles!” while questioning Greene about her view of the leadership of the Democratic Party. To which Greene responded, “[Democrats, including Biden, support] children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries. … Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children.” To this Stahl responded, “Wow,” as if she had never heard this before.
It may come as a shock to establishment types, but this is a sentence you could hear in any living room in America’s heartland. Regular Americans think there is something creepy about those who insist on children being able to mutilate their genitals without their parents’ consent.
Later, Stahl would emphasize that Greene disputes the validity of the 2020 presidential election and (gasp) listened to right-wing talk radio growing up. If you go 50 miles outside of Manhattan, both things are almost universal.
Toward the end of the interview, Greene explained that her original motivation to run for Congress was her anger at the ineffectual Republican establishment. Greene’s anger was well-placed.
Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Mitt Romney — what do all these men have in common? They are all the opposite of white trash. They are textbook establishment types. All of them have the perfect politician’s polish but — to paraphrase Trump — they are choke artists when it comes to passing legislation for middle America or winning elections.
Other than during a brief period of the Trump presidency, there were no legislative victories for the “deplorables.” NAFTA had become law and there were multiple attempts to expand it or create similar agreements elsewhere. America’s steel and coal industries were suffering without support, and getting any part of a wall built on the southern border seemed like a pipe dream.
Perhaps then we should celebrate the entrance of so-called white trash into Congress. Since at least the 2000s, the Republican establishment in Washington likes middle America when it gives them votes, but it otherwise cannot stand regular people.
When Arizona Sen. John McCain ran for president in 2008, he was caught off guard at a town hall event when a plainly dressed man in a ball cap and T-shirt expressed his fears about Barack Obama’s association with domestic terrorist group leader Bill Ayers.
McCain dismissively told the man, “[Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States.” McCain’s response was understandably booed by some in the audience.
The man had a point. 2008 was not long after 9/11. If a potential president has connections to terrorists, is that not worth investigating? Further, why were McCain’s supporters more aggressive about defeating Obama than McCain was?
Confusingly, McCain would end up running an attack ad on Obama that fell along the same lines as the man’s question. Even the casual observer had to wonder why McCain found a regular person’s criticism of Obama unacceptable and then turned around and used it himself.
This came after McCain tried to co-opt America’s working class and Tea Party movement by (reluctantly) recruiting Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Anyone old enough to remember probably recalls that the Joe Six-Packs of America adored Palin. I can remember people in my small-ish hometown in Texas going gaga for the fresh-faced Alaska governor. Notably, everyone’s enthusiasm was for Palin, not McCain.
Palin was unfairly kicked around by the media and McCain’s staffers were allegedly fueling it. McCain obviously harbored resentment against her — even though she is probably the only reason he got any votes. He openly regretted not picking Sen. Joe Lieberman (a former Democrat) as his VP and Palin was not invited to his funeral.
For years, middle America has tried to depend on virtual representation through establishment candidates to make ourselves heard. We constantly discover that the establishment Republicans hold as much disdain for us as the coastal media establishment.
Perhaps it is MTG’s rough-around-the-edges, salt-of-the-earth deportment that has immunized her from the flattery of media editorials and the allure of political establishment grandeur.
Unlike Marco Rubio — a career politician who was once a Tea Party darling and who now takes the same position on illegal immigration amnesty as The New York Times and Jeb Bush — Greene has not yet been corrupted by her time in Washington.
The MTG model may be replicable for almost every district in the heartland. If we nominate candidates just like us, the media and political swamp will be so disgusted that they won’t even try to persuade our representatives to support suicidal policies like amnesty and endless foreign intervention.
Greene has proven herself not only consistent on the issues but unusually adept at climbing the political ladder. If MTG is white trash, then I say let’s turn Congress into a trailer park.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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