Look, this is easy: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was out of line in a committee hearing Thursday night when insulting other members’ physical appearance and intelligence, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) was derelict in failing to control his committee adequately.
No ifs, ands, or buts. Decorum matters. House rules matter. Greene violated both. And she is a habitual offender of proper decorum. House leadership now should retroactively “take down” from the record not just her original, insulting words but her subsequent slam at a colleague’s intelligence. Moreover, leaders should warn her that if she doesn’t start behaving better, she will lose committee assignments.
The point of doing this is not just to punish Greene but also to signal to every other representative that it’s time to raise standards of behavior.
In short, it’s time to stop polluting the “People’s House.”
Here’s what happened. Greene asked a question, entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand (involving the conduct of Attorney General Merrick Garland), about whether any (Democratic) committee members employ a certain judge’s daughter. It’s not even clear what her point was. In reply, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) understandably said, “Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland,” and then asked, “Do you know what we’re here for?”
To which Greene said, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” thus kicking off a nasty back-and-forth among several members while Comer sat helpless, not convincingly trying to control his committee. While Greene nodded agreement to “strike her words” from the record, she immediately said she would “not apologize” and then said to another Democrat that “you don’t have enough intelligence” to debate her.
As more chaos ensued, those words were not immediately taken down.
House rules say that “remarks in debate … shall be confined to the question under debate, avoiding personality.” The tenor of the numerous other rules combined with plenty of well-enforced precedent, understood by every member of the House, makes clear that while it is perfectly OK to debate policy vociferously, one must never impugn the looks, character, or intelligence of a fellow member. Multiple offenders tend to be given, and deserve, very short leashes.
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Greene is a frequent bender of those rules of decorum, including abuses of the House dress code. And when Democrats were in power, they removed Greene from all committees because of her long record (before she was elected to Congress) of various remarks that were reasonably interpreted as being antisemitic, racist, loony, and calumnious, or that called for the execution of members of Congress.
In sum, Greene is a disgrace. Frankly, it’s also a disgrace that constituents in Georgia have elected her twice and seem poised to do so again. Either way, her behavior is unacceptable. She merits some form of punishment for her refusal to honor the institution that represents the republican ideals of a great people.