By Todd Lassa

Can Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) unite the GOP behind Donald J. Trump by tearing it apart? 

That seems to be the objective of the otherwise powerless freshman in the House of Representatives (stripped of committee assignments at the beginning of the year) as she engages in public tiffs with speaker-in-waiting Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and marginally less-conservative members of his Republican caucus. 

According to The Bulwark, the latest incident occurred when another Trump acolyte, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) “apologized” for her anti-Muslim remarks regarding Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) over an encounter sharing a House office building elevator. Greene, better known as MTG, tweeted that Boebert shouldn’t apologize to members of “the Jihad Squad,” which in turn drew a tweet from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) calling out her racism. 

MTG responded by calling Mace a “RINO” who should hang out with her friends in the Democratic Party. Mace most definitely is not a “Republican In Name Only,” and defended her conservative credentials, as a “pro-life fiscal conservative,” who by the way, voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill as well as against Trump’s second impeachment. 

McCarthy reportedly held a meeting of the two last Tuesday, telling them to stop. MTG ignored the minority leader and told a reporter that Trump supports a primary challenge to Mace’s re-election race next year. 

Writing about these exchanges for The Bulwark, a conservative anti-Trump website, Editor-at-Large Charlie Sykes suggests ironically that Greene, and not McCarthy, has all the power inside the Republican House caucus and thus should be made speaker if the GOP regains the majority in the 2022 midterms. (Sykes makes no mention in this case of the rumor that Trump himself will run for the speaker’s seat, which can go to an individual not serving in Congress.)

The week before, during the House’s Thanksgiving break MTG told Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on his podcast that McCarthy “doesn’t have the votes to be speaker,” and that she wants Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) – who has voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and for Trump’s second impeachment -- banished from the GOP. Green suggested other Republicans who voted for infrastructure should be punished by the minority leader. 

This is also from The Bulwark’s Sykes, who suggests McCarthy is “groveling” for support from the extreme Trumpists to shore up sufficient votes to become speaker after the midterms. It’s a big hypothetical to think “moderate” Republicans like Kinzinger, and even Mace could be pushed out of the GOP and become spoilers in the House Democratic caucus in the manner of Joe Manchin III (WV) and Krysten Sinema (AZ) in the Senate Democratic caucus. But if Greene is running things, and not McCarthy, and can help  usher in a wave of fellow Trump acolytes with the November 2022 midterms, who is most likely to become