{"id":302565,"date":"2025-11-23T22:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T22:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/302565\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T22:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T22:35:07","slug":"marjorie-taylor-greene-both-muddles-and-clarifies-the-future-of-maga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/302565\/","title":{"rendered":"Marjorie Taylor Greene both muddles and clarifies the future of MAGA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Marjorie Taylor Greene attends a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Tuesday.Julia Demaree Nikhinson\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Suddenly American political experts are wondering whether a three-term congresswoman from a bridge-shaped district bordering both Alabama and Tennessee is the canary in the coal mine of the modern Republican Party.<\/p>\n

She is Marjorie Taylor Greene, the battle-hardened defender of Donald Trump<\/a> who in a matter of days was transformed into an unlikely but unabashed symbol of Republican resistance to the 47th President. And now that she\u2019s resigning the Georgia seat she has held since 2021 and disavowing the politics of division that she personified with virtuosity and vigour, the future of the MAGA movement is both muddled \u2013 and oddly clarified.<\/p>\n

Muddled \u2013 because the decision by Ms. Greene, who in recent days has defied Mr. Trump with characteristic flamboyance, has raised questions about the fragility of the MAGA movement as the Republican Party girds for next year\u2019s midterm congressional elections amid sobering poll results.<\/p>\n

Clarified \u2013 because, with her pressure on Mr. Trump to release documents related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and then with her high-profile fight with the President, whom she once defended with unflagging passion, the realization that the GOP eventually must go forward without Mr. Trump at its helm has come into sharp relief with astonishing speed.<\/p>\n

Thus, the questions prompted by the fevered past several weeks are far broader than the political destiny of Ms. Greene, who has attracted far more attention in three terms in the House of Representatives than John F. Kennedy, who eight years later became president, managed in a roughly similar-length period from 1947 to 1953. <\/p>\n

Analysis: Is Trump still leading the MAGA movement or is the movement now leading him?<\/a><\/p>\n

That is the significance of her rebellion, and then of Mr. Trump\u2019s characterization of her as Marjorie \u201cTraitor\u201d Greene and his dismissal of her, saying, on his Truth Social platform, \u201call I see \u2018Wacky\u2019 Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!\u201d<\/p>\n

The President may have argued that her resignation, scheduled for Jan. 5 \u2013 just after she qualifies for generous congressional pension benefits \u2013 is \u201cgreat news for the country.\u201d But it likely is not great news for MAGA, for it shines an unforgiving light on the widening fissures, over issues ranging from AI to overseas engagement, in the movement Mr. Trump began and twice rode to the White House.<\/p>\n

There are increasing numbers of isolated but high-profile Trump-affiliated lawmakers wandering, and in some cases bolting, from MAGA orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Some of these rebellions are over the strains Mr. Trump\u2019s policies have caused for his core constituencies, including blue-collar and middle-income voters who, with various degrees of enthusiasm, supported a populist idiom that appealed to their resentment of the prerogatives of the wealthy and the professional elites and to their concerns about job insecurity and food and housing prices.<\/p>\n

Nearly a year into his second term, according to the University of Michigan\u2019s respected consumer sentiment survey, almost half of middle-income respondents said their financial situation has worsened. In her latest report, survey director Joanne Hsu wrote that \u201cconsumers remain frustrated about the persistence of high prices and weakening incomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opinion: A cornered Donald Trump is dangerous<\/a><\/p>\n

Other MAGA-allied Republican lawmakers are troubled that the President\u2019s policies cutting Obamacare subsidies injure the very people his movement attracted to march under the MAGA standard. As they face 2026 re-election battles, these officials worry that their ties to Mr. Trump will hurt more than help their prospects.<\/p>\n

Some of them, including Ms. Greene, have expressed concern about how the administration\u2019s health care proposals are incongruous with the rhetoric of the MAGA movement. Some of them have come to distrust the White House theorists whose ideas about limited government have meant limited service to the movement\u2019s constituents. And many of them believe Mr. Trump\u2019s initial resistance to the release of the Epstein documents is at odds with his anti-elitist profile.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the glittery and gaudy White House dinner for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia on Nov. 18 was not in keeping with the movement\u2019s distrust of elites and was incongruous for the kind of populist leader the President presented as his electoral profile.<\/p>\n

Ms. Greene sought to place herself on the moral high ground with her break from Mr. Trump in her demand for the release of the Epstein papers.<\/p>\n

\u201cStanding up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men,\u201d she said, \u201cshould not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Keller: Trump is trying to turn the U.S. into something unrecognizable<\/a><\/p>\n

And yet in the short term, the dispute between Mr. Trump and Ms. Greene \u2013 whose Senate aspirations the President refused to support \u2013 shows that even though his grip on the movement may be weakening, he continues to have substantial influence. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis fight underlines the power that Trump still retains,\u201d Alexander Hinton, a cultural anthropologist at Rutgers University who has studied MAGA for years, said in an interview. \u201cEven someone who is hardcore MAGA \u2013 and Marjorie Taylor Greene is arguably more MAGA than Trump himself \u2013 can\u2019t break the one rule of MAGA: Don\u2019t cross the boss. She crossed the boss and she\u2019s out.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, Prof. Hinton argued, \u201cThere is no MAGA without Trump, and once he\u2019s gone, it will somehow dissipate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Greene \u2013 who said, \u201cI refuse to be a \u2018battered wife\u2019 hoping it all goes away and gets better\u201d \u2013 cast herself as being thrust out of MAGA, adding that her expulsion was symbolic of how \u201cmany common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she contemplates her future, Ms. Green may be channelling Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw\u2019s Pygmalion: \u201cWhat is to become of me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Greene also clearly is saying, as Eliza did, that Mr. Trump had \u201cno right to take away my character.\u201d Her reflections, which include the statement \u201cmy self-worth is not defined by a man,\u201d may also match this passage from the Shaw play:<\/p>\n

Eliza Doolittle: \u201cYou wanted me back only to put up with your tempers, and pick up your slippers, and fetch and carry for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Henry Higgins: \u201cI haven\u2019t said I want you back at all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Marjorie Taylor Greene attends a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,22158,75,135829,9257,3277,348,33221,2393,1971],"class_list":["post-302565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-democrats","tag-entertainment","tag-gop","tag-republicans","tag-trump","tag-tv","tag-us-politics","tag-washington-dc","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}