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As House Republicans dramatically changed the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday night, adding a series of far-right culture war priorities, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene initially balked. The Georgian said the revisions weren’t enough, and she intended to vote against it anyway.
But on Friday morning, as the final vote on the NDAA neared, the radical Georgia congresswoman reversed course and voted with her party.
What happened between Thursday night and Friday morning? NBC News reported on the behind-the-scenes promise that changed her mind.
[Greene said] the reason for her change of heart was that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., promised her a seat on the conference committee that will hash out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. Greene, who is opposed to additional funding for Ukraine, said her goal in the conference committee will be to convince her colleagues that if more money for the war-torn country should be offered as part of a separate supplemental funding package.
I suspect that many will see the phrase “conference committee” and get bored, but on Capitol Hill, this matters: The NDAA not only funds the United States military, it also guides Pentagon policy. It’s not an exaggeration to say as much legislative work goes into this one package as any other bill in a typical Congress.
Because the House and Senate have very different versions of the package, members of the conference committee will be tasked with reconciling the competing details and hammering out a solution to be sent back to both chambers. Ordinarily, that power would go to members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, who’ve spent months writing the bill.
But this year, the House speaker agreed to put Greene on the conference committee — despite the fact that she’s not on the relevant committees, and despite the fact that the extremist spent last week pushing for the United States to withdraw from the NATO alliance and trying to gut U.S. support for Ukraine in the NDAA.
She is not, in other words, the kind of lawmaker one might expect to see on the NDAA conference committee. Greene is also not the kind of lawmaker who’s likely to play a constructive role in the behind-closed-doors negotiations. And yet, here we are, watching McCarthy handing her a sought-after prize anyway.
Stepping back, what’s worth appreciating is the evolution of how McCarthy and GOP leaders have dealt with Greene, and the breathtaking speed with which these changes have occurred.
It might seem like ancient history, but it was just three years ago when Greene was an unhinged congressional candidate who was seen as among the most notorious House hopefuls in the country. As we discussed at the time, in the summer of 2020, the public learned about Greene supporting the QAnon delusion, and a number of racist comments and offensive videos she helped promote online.
Greene also wrote strange articles as a “correspondent” for a conspiracy news website, suggested the Obama administration partnered with a street gang in the murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer, referenced “the so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon” as part of a discussion on the September 11 attacks, and visited Capitol Hill in the hopes of demanding Muslim members of Congress take their oaths of office on a Christian Bible.
McCarthy’s office condemned Greene’s extremism as “appalling.” Future House Majority Leader Steve Scalise not only described Greene’s rhetoric as “disgusting,” he also endorsed her primary opponent. After she won the primary anyway, many rank-and-file House Republican members were reportedly “livid“ with the GOP leadership for not having done more to derail her candidacy.
Greene nevertheless made it to Congress, at which point, she became even more controversial. McCarthy at one point proposed removing the extremist from one of her committee assignments, and after Greene spoke at a white nationalist event, McCarthy condemned the move as “appalling“ and “unacceptable.”
His outrage faded quickly. Earlier this year, the House speaker rewarded Greene with sought-after committee assignments. McCarthy then thought it’d be a good idea to celebrate the radical Georgian as “one of the best” members of the GOP conference, and “one of the strongest legislators” in the House.
And late last week, the House Republican leader — I’m referring in this instance to McCarthy, not Greene — found a new way to reward one of his most extremist members, putting Greene in a position to fight for right-wing defense priorities that McCarthy ostensibly opposes.
It’s a dynamic that would’ve been difficult to predict three years ago.