THERE WAS DIRT ON MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE BEFORE SHE WAS ELECTED, BUT IT WAS THE WRONG DIRT

Erick Erickson has been positioning himself as a voice of reason lately -- he particularly wants it known that he opposed Donald Trump's efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election. He's also not a fan of fellow Georgian Marjorie Taylor Greene. In a new post at his Substack site, he says that he knew she was a problem for the Republican Party, and her election was a failure of the Georgia GOP political establishment.

I knew Marjorie Taylor Greene was QAnon and a 9/11 truther.

Today, I learn the congresswoman from Georgia ... believes the Jews have an orbital space laser that started wild fires in California to clear a path for a high speed rail system. Yes, she actually believes that....

Marjorie Taylor Greene also believes or believed that the Newtown, CT and Parkland, FL school shootings were “false flag” operations, a favorite conspiracy of nuts online....

Greene ... got elected because no one had knowledge about her.... Her election is not a damning indictment on the people of Georgia, but on the political class.

I know because I am literally the only voice across the five media markets in her district, openly told listeners they’d regret voting for her, and never once had any of the opposition research shared with me.

Trust me, if I knew about the Jews in space, that would have made incredible radio during the primary. But I had no idea.

In fact, what I was told by Republican operatives is that Greene had a ceiling in the runoff and all I needed to do was warn voters about voting for her. They said she couldn’t win the runoff. They were wrong.

Erickson is suggesting that there wasn't enough available dirt on Greene to defeat her. But there was -- it just wasn't the right kind of dirt.

Greene came first in her primary on June 9 -- but because she didn't win more than 50% of the vote, she faced a runoff on August 11.

Between the primary and the runoff, we learned a lot about her.

On June 11, the Daily Beast reported:

... Greene has praised QAnon. In a video posted online, she called the anonymous “Q” a “patriot” and said that their predictions had been accurate.

“Many of the things that he has given clues about and talked on 4Chan and other forums have really proven to be true,” Greene said....

Greene has also posted about QAnon on social media, tweeting QAnon catchphrases “Trust the plan” and “#GreatAwakening” and praising a QAnon clue as an “awesome post” in 2018....

In another video, Greene pursued Parkland shooting survivor and gun-control advocate David Hogg in the street outside in Washington, saying in her video that Hogg is a “coward” with “George Soros funding.”

That's right -- the video that made so much news this week was posted by the Daily Beast before Greene even won her runoff.

On June 17, Politico reported:

... POLITICO uncovered hours of Facebook videos in which [Greene] expresses racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views.

[She] suggested that Muslims do not belong in government; thinks black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party”; called George Soros, a Jewish Democratic megadonor, a Nazi; and said she would feel “proud” to see a Confederate monument if she were black because it symbolizes progress made since the Civil War....

In recordings obtained by POLITICO, Greene described Islamic nations under Sharia law as places where men have sex with "little boys, little girls, multiple women" and "marry their sisters" and "their cousins." She suggested the 2018 midterms — which ushered in the most diverse class of House freshmen — was part of “an Islamic invasion of our government” and that “anyone that is a Muslim that believes in Sharia law does not belong in our government.”

In other videos, she directly compared Black Lives Matter activists to the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who marched at a white nationalist rally three years ago in Charlottesville, Va., denouncing them all as “idiots.” And Greene forcefully rejected the notion there are racial disparities in the U.S. or that skin color affects the “quality” of one's life: “Guess what? Slavery is over,” she said. “Black people have equal rights.” ... In a video and on social media, Greene has also touted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Soros, a Holocaust survivor, collaborated with the Nazis.

“George Soros says dark forces have been awakened by Trump’s win. I don’t think so,” she said in one video. “George Soros is the piece of crap that turned in — he’s a Jew — he turned in his own people over to the Nazis.”

In February 2019, Greene replied to a tweet that included several memes accusing Soros of being part of a secret totalitarian world government. One picture showed Soros as a vampire who controls “every single Democrat politician.” In her reply, Greene called Soros “the Nazi himself trying to continue what was not finished.”

As noted in the Politico story, a few Republicans expressed concern about Greene. But the party clearly didn't think it had a major problem on its hands. There was no pressure from top Republicans to drive her out of the race.

Why? Because the outrageous things she was reported to have said weren't considered outrageous by Republicans. Republicans don't consider anti-Islamic bigotry outrageous. They don't regard anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros as outrageous. They don't think harassment of gun control advocates, even those who have survived mass shootings, is outrageous. And they don't believe that QAnon, which posits that all Democrats are cannibalistic pedophiles, is outrageous.

The warning signs were there -- but they were the wrong warning signs. Jewish space lasers? Republicans would have considered that a warning sign. All of our enemies are Hitler-level monsters? Not a problem. And that's why Greene is in Congress now.