TRUMP PASSES THE TORCH

This is more significant than you realize:

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Saturday that she spoke with former President Trump as she faces growing bipartisan criticism over past social media posts in which she expressed support for violence against Democrats....

I had a GREAT call with my all time favorite POTUS, President Trump!

I’m so grateful for his support and more importantly the people of this country are absolutely 100% loyal to him because he is 100% loyal to the people and America First.

Cont’d...

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) January 30, 2021

Josh Marshall is essentially correct:

Will take a bit for most to realize it. But with this call Trump has made Greene de facto leader of the House GOP caucus. She speaks for him and he supports her. So she is untouchable. Nominal leaders like McCarthy will fall in line and take her lead because they answer to Trump.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 30, 2021

Trump might not have made Greene the effective head of the House Republican caucus, but he's now made it explicit that if you cross her, you cross him.

It should have already been clear to Greene's fellow Republicans that she's a hero to Trump's base, and that attacking her marks you as a RINO worthy of defeat, if not death by hanging. But this officially puts her under the protection of the Godfather -- hurt her and he'll make you pay.

The time to stop Greene was before she made it to the general election, which she was guaranteed to win because of the extremely Republican nature of her district. But important Republicans not only failed to stop her, they encouraged her candidacy and urged her to run in this very red district, even though she didn't live there.

... Greene’s widely reported comments about the radical ideology of QAnon and other matters had not stopped a coterie of top Republicans from urging her to run for the seat representing a deeply conservative district in north Georgia, and then issuing fervent endorsements.

Greene was “exactly the kind of fighter needed in Washington to stand with me against the radical left,” declared Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Debbie Meadows, who ran an influential political action committee and whose husband, Mark Meadows, became Trump’s chief of staff, gushed, “We cannot wait to welcome her to Congress.”

... As Greene’s [online] videos received wider viewership, she announced that she was considering a run for Congress in the district where she lived near Atlanta.

That prompted a number of reports in the summer of 2019 about her videos. She was initially described in the local media as a long shot and was widely written off. But when then-Rep. Tom Graves retired from a heavily Republican district in north Georgia, Greene said she was urged by top Republicans in Washington to switch to that race.

Greene said at a GOP breakfast that “I started getting phone calls from the most conservative members in the House Freedom Caucus. Debbie Meadows — Mark Meadows’ wife — Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Biggs (R-Ariz.) is chairman of the Freedom Caucus.

At the time, Mark Meadows was preparing to resign his seat as a North Carolina member of the House to become Trump’s chief of staff, and Debbie Meadows would become executive director of Right Women, a political action committee devoted to electing women who agree to become members of the House Freedom Caucus. The website of Right Women said that it has a “robust vetting process,” suggesting it would have been aware of the reporting about Greene’s comments....

“Right Women is enthusiastic in our support of Marjorie Greene, and we are thrilled that she will advance to the runoff in August,” Debbie Meadows said in a news release in June 2020. “Marjorie is committed to standing up for economic freedom and will help advance President Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda.”

For a little-known first-time candidate with a dodgy past, Greene attracted a fair amount of out-of-state billionaire cash, as The Guardian reported in August.

Greene ... received donations from major Republican donors, including Tatnall Hillman, who was described by Colorado Politics as “a secretive Aspen billionaire who annually makes multi-million contributions to Republican candidates”; Lenore Broughton, who was described by Vermont paper Seven Days as “a Burlington heiress with a history of funding conservative causes”, and Cherna Moskowitz, the head of the Irving Moskowitz Foundation and chair of the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.

Cherna Moskowitz is the widow of Irving Moskowitz, a Florida-based gambling magnate reportedly worth $8 billion; the Moskowitzes' foundation funds the Israeli settler movement. (Yes, a prominent Zionist gave money to the Soros-slandering Greene, now best known for her "Jewish space laser" theory -- but we see philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism living comfortably together all over the right, particularly in Trump's orbit.)

In any case, Greene is set for life, unless she aims too high. I can imagine her concluding that she should run against Brian Kemp for governor or Raphael Warnock for Senate in 2022. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll says that new senators Warnock and Jon Ossoff have solid support from Georgia voters now, as does President Biden, while Kemp is underwater and Trump even more so. But I bet she could win a primary, and in two years Biden's honeymoon will be long past. I hope it's a new day in Georgia, or at least in most of the state, but after Trump, I never want to bet that any Republican is too crazy to win an election.