Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked the Republican “leadership” in the House for putting the infamous Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House Education Committee. Here is a quotation from the news report:

 …what could they be thinking?” Pelosi asked Thursday. “Or is thinking too generous a word for what they might be doing? It’s absolutely appalling, and I think the focus has to be on the Republican leadership of this House of Representatives for the disregard they have for the death of those children.”

Well, the Republicans in Congress are, in fact, thinking all the time, but only of themselves and about how anything they say or do might affect their chances of re-election. For them, it is indeed “all about me.” 

Ms Greene is both a nutcase and deeply cynical, with a long record of bizarre and indefensible statements. Her recent election was assured by the attractiveness of her lies to the conspiracy swallowing-proletariat of Republican voters to whom she has been pandering for years by signing on to almost any conspiracy theory that has come along. And Republicans are wary of alienating the bigoted, ignorant, and manic in the Trump base.

Embarrassment should be far too mild a word for Ms Greene’s effect on the Republican Party. Her presence in Congress is a damning judgement on the Party that has winked at and encouraged the delusions of the whole spectrum of the violent right. This kind of thing goes back at least as far as Nixon’s “Southern strategy” whereby he welcomed segregationists into the Republican Party.

Though Ms Greene’s documented statements from recent years should have made her an utter pariah with anyone of sense, the Republican Party has welcomed her into Congress and will now fight as mindlessly for her as they did for the liar Trump.