Bookman: Understanding what led to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s transformation isn’t complicated

Writing in the “Never Trump” outlet The Bulwark, columnist Jonathan V. Last says the transformation of Georgia’s own Marjorie Taylor Greene represents “the best hope for liberalism in America.”  That’s probably not something you ever thought you would read. By “liberalism,” Last makes clear, “we do not mean Democratic policy preferences. I do not expect […]

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who plans to step down on Jan. 5, speaks at a town hall in 2025. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Writing in the “Never Trump” outlet The Bulwark, columnist Jonathan V. Last says the transformation of Georgia’s own Marjorie Taylor Greene represents “the best hope for liberalism in America.” 

That’s probably not something you ever thought you would read.

By “liberalism,” Last makes clear, “we do not mean Democratic policy preferences. I do not expect MTG to change her views on the Second Amendment, climate change, abortion, the costs/benefits of immigration, the role of America in geopolitics, or any other issue.” 

While those issues are all important, they are disagreements that we can and should resolve through the democratic process, just as we have done for more than two centuries. By “liberalism,” Last means something more fundamental. He means a renewed commitment to that democratic process of dispute resolution, and with it a rejection of authoritarian government that defies our Constitution and national legacy.

Last is hardly alone in the national media in his embrace of Greene’s transformation as a deep-winter sign of a coming political spring. Writing in a lengthy profile in The New York Times, reporter Robert Draper tells us that Greene’s disenchantment has grown so deep that she no longer watches Fox News, “because she found it factually unreliable.” Draper proposes that in her newest incarnation, Greene “may yet again prove to be a harbinger of a sea change in the movement she once helped lead.”

Then there’s George Conway, the former high-level GOP attorney, former husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, and a man now running for Congress as a Democrat. 

“(Greene) is no angel, but this isn’t an act,” Conway writes in a social media post. “It isn’t some ploy for power.” As Conway sees it, “The heavy burden of cognitive dissonance and denial” required to remain a Trump supporter “finally became unbearable for her. And she’s done with it. To the point that she’s just letting it all out, consequences be damned. She’s liberated, and there’s no better feeling.”

Me, I’m still not buying any of it.  

Call me cynical – after a decade of watching Trump, I certainly qualify – but if Trump had agreed last spring to support Greene’s Senate candidacy against Jon Ossoff, she would still be Trump’s loyal follower today. She left the cult and resigned her House seat not out of some sudden road-to-Damascus conversion, and not because of some realization about Trump’s character, but because she understood that he would not be the pathway to her ambitions. It was a decision made largely out of self-interest.

On a human level, I can accept that’s not how Greene experiences it or explains it to others. Like all of us, she wants to think the best of herself, and if that means explaining her dramatic breach with Trump in terms of finally seeing the light, or coming back into line with her Christian beliefs, I’m OK with that. Good for her. 

However, that’s not how the phenomenon is going to play out in the future. I say that because by this point, most of those who might abandon Trump based on principle or patriotism have already done so, often at considerable professional and personal loss. 

Brad Raffensperger, for example, is never going to be governor of Georgia. Liz Cheney is never going to be speaker of the House. Mike Pence is never going to be president. They sacrificed those ambitions to preserve the republic as well as their own integrity, and we should always be grateful that they did so. I disagree with them on almost every political issue, but I also admire them. They are heroes, and what they did should not be confused with what Greene is doing.

If Trump’s support continues to erode, it will be because more and more people begin to understand what Greene understands, that it’s no longer in their own personal interest to stick with him. They will abandon him because they realize that Trump cannot give them what they want or need, because in many cases he never had any intention of doing so. 

That won’t be true of some people. Certainly, those who want cruelty to immigrants, white Christian nationalism and a government that squelches dissent will continue to be made happy by Trump. Those who have achieved positions of power through abject loyalty to Trump that they could never have earned by their own merit will continue to support him because they have no alternative. In poker terms, they are pot-committed.

But for others, it may be dawning on them that Trump is not going to lead a revolution against the elite. He is not going to defend the interests of the little guy against the billionaire class any more than he is going to release the Epstein files or defend Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, because he always sees the world through the eyes of the predator not the prey. 

And if Marjorie Greene can eventually see that, maybe others can as well.