ANt at least Marjorie Taylor Greene won’t have to waste time sitting at the end of the dais during the committee’s lengthy hearings.
House Democrats voted to remove her from her committee duties in an act they will certainly regret, perhaps in January 2023.
If the majority can keep opposition party members out of committees based on incendiary comments, it is unclear why the Republican Party let, say, Maxine Waters serve on any committee when it had control of the House, or why it will. again.
Greene’s kick-off will be remembered as another turning point in the constant unfolding of institutional rules on Capitol Hill.
That said, we believe the Republicans should have solved the problem with their own hands and denied Greene his assignments on the committee to draw a line against malicious madness in its own ranks.
The fact that Democrats had a gun to their heads with the threat of voting in plenary on Greene’s committee’s duties probably made it politically more difficult for minority leader Kevin McCarthy to act on his own. He sought an agreement with the Democrats to remove it from the Education and Work Committee and the House Budget Committee and, instead, relegate it to the Small Business Committee.
When the Democrats didn’t bite, McCarthy again condemned her previous comments and drew an expression of regret from her at an internal GOP meeting earlier in the week that she repeated on the floor of the House on Thursday. Her statement did not sound sincere, but it was better than nothing, even though she was immediately giving a combative press conference, where she said, “I’m fine with being kicked out of committees because it would be a waste of time.”
We certainly have nothing about it.