Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) unexpectedly called on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to work with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.In a statement on Tuesday, Johnson said Republicans should support his plan to include the SAVE Act, legislation making it more difficult to vote, in a bi...

We have definitely been transported to an alternate universe

  • vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    196·
    2 months ago

    Really wild to see MTG appear to be on the correct side twice in a week. I wonder what the goal of the party is aside from distancing themselves from a losing candidate.

    • JesusSon@lemmy.world
      170·
      2 months ago

      I think she woke up and realized a government shutdown right before an election caused by ineffectual republican leadership might hurt them in the down-ballot. Or we woke up Sunday on the next timeline because the earth exploded, and everyone died Saturday night. It’s been a crazy week and it’s only Tuesday.

      Edit: looks like a shutdown before the election due to ineffectual republican leadership is back on the menu boys.

      • djsoren19@yiffit.net
        80·
        2 months ago

        I mean yeah that’s sound political strategy, but you’re telling me MTG woke up and possessed the self reflection necessary to realize that?

        I think it’s more believable that we all died.

      • StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world
        411·
        2 months ago

        I think this is absolutely the correct interpretation of this. Shutting down the government because repubs don’t want to play ball weeks before an election is only likely to hurt their chances.

        • BigFig@lemmy.worldEnglish
          351·
          2 months ago

          Yeah but they do this every election year, and their supporters never care

        • Rakonat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          2 months ago

          I think you’re putting far to much faith in people willing to vote ®, their base would vote for them even as their families are sent to labor and death camps, while undecided and ‘independent’ voters will cast their ballot entirely on the last headline or 72 hours.

          To me this reeks of Greene and other Magots realizing their wing of the party is imploding and will have to find a place in what ever GOP comes out the otherside of this election and the next midterm. Trump’s decline makes it pretty obvious they need someone else’s coattails to grab onto and rally around, so she’s trying to be the loudest voice in the room to be part of the new power structure if not the face of it.

          • StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 months ago

            It matters very little if I or any of us have faith in the republican voter base and rather it matters if the Republican leadership thinks it could matter to a significant enough portion of their base that they should avoid a shutdown.

            Also, I find the rest of your comment to be quite insightful. I do think most of the Republican leadership are still all in on Trump, however I wouldn’t be surprised if there some back up plans in the works.

      • ultranaut@lemmy.world
        21·
        2 months ago

        This is exactly it. Shutdowns are not popular, if they shutdown the gov before the election it is going to cost them significant votes. They are already worried about the impact of Trump on down ballot candidates, a shutdown will almost certainly cost them seats. This is MTG expressing her panic because she realizes how stupid the GOP is behaving with an election about to happen.

          • Billiam@lemmy.world
            21·
            2 months ago

            Of course she does.

            She’s terrified that if the Dems take the House back, she’ll lose her committee seats again. Like all small-government advocates, she wants power.

            • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
              6·
              2 months ago

              Ah, thank you. Considering what a shithole “safe”-ly red district she represents, I didn’t think she had any particular reason to care even with vote losses from a shutdown.

      • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
        7·
        2 months ago

        It makes logical sense for a person to draw this conclusion, but MTG is famously an idiot, so that’s what’s baffling. What convinced her to change her tune?

      • Trilobite@lemm.ee
        3·
        2 months ago

        No way she is involved in the Russian election interference case and is trying to pull a tim pool

      • Rakonat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        81·
        2 months ago

        Putin consistently underestimates women. He was happy Hillary was secretary of state until she gave vocal support to the Ukrainian Revolutions in 2014 that ousted his puppet. He assumed CIA was pulling her strings or operating through her so tried to burn that bridge. Trump was a resounding failure at implementing long term policies to benefit Russia, so now he’s banking on Harris being passive in foreign policy.

    • zcd@lemmy.ca
      54·
      2 months ago

      She might’ve been hit by a stray neutrino or something? Flipped a random bit?

    • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.world
      21·
      2 months ago

      Is she trying to distance herself from the maga side of the party after seeing the polls predicting a big defeat this election?

      Very strange to see.

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
      12·
      2 months ago

      Priority #1 is always to remain elected so that you can stay “on the take”.

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
          7·
          2 months ago

          I wonder if there’s any way that could be changed by executive action? If the government gets shut down, Congresspersons don’t get paid. Their aides and support staff are essential because they do the real work, but they don’t get paid until they pass a budget…?

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
    951·
    2 months ago

    MTG hasn’t suddenly grown a ethocortical gland. She’s getting polling numbers that scare her, and she wants to win reelection. Georgia is turning purple for a variety of reasons, and a government shut down would be bad for her campaign.

    • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
      30·
      2 months ago

      I haven’t seen polling specifically for her district but, while Georgia is very purple (and has been since like 2014), her district is gerrymandered to hell and back to not be anything other than red. I think I saw that it’s one of the deepest red districts in the country.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
        201·
        2 months ago

        Deep red refers to voter registrations. It’s generally a very good indicator which was they will go, but this election is anything but politics as usual.

        I’m not privy to her internal polling, but I’ll bet she saw numbers than people in her district are concerned about Trump, see a lack of leadership in the GOP, and are considering staying home rather than show up for her. Angry people show up to vote, and if enough people say they are going to vote Trump out, then she doesn’t want to be on his boat when it happens.

        Another possibility is that she’s testing the waters for a Senate or Governor run in 2026. She doesn’t need to move towards the center if she can bash people to her right. It makes her look reasonable and conciliatory without actually being either one.

        Either way, she’s not doing this because of principles. She’s doing it for personal benefit, because she’s a conservative.

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          18·
          2 months ago

          I’m sorry but, as a Georgian, I’m pretty sure she has a 0% chance of either losing her district or getting elected to statewide office, no matter what she does.

    • SaltySalamander@fedia.io
      5·
      2 months ago

      The only danger MTG has in her district, as someone who lives right next to her district, is being primaried. She will never lose the general to a Democrat.

    • tuckerm@supermeter.social
      52·
      2 months ago

      That was a great explanation.

      I remember hearing an interview with John Boehner on NPR (former Republican Speaker of the House) a few years ago. He was talking about the government shutdown that happened shortly after far right wing was elected in 2010. Apparently, a few of them barged into his office after the shutdown and demanded to know why the government had actually shut down.

      And Boehner was like, “Um…you said you wanted it to?”

      And the right wingers said, “Well we didn’t think it would work!”

      These are irresponsible people who think they should just get to play games in life.

      • sawdustprophet@midwest.socialEnglish
        17·
        2 months ago

        And the right wingers said, “Well we didn’t think it would work!”

        I recall a number of voters who voted in favor of Brexit who were interviewed and said things like “but I didn’t think it would actually happen!”

        I also seem to recall a similar sentiment in a case where people voted to strip funding from a local library in Michigan, then were shocked when the library had to close.

      • GraniteM@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 months ago

        Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

        –Jean-Paul Sartre

  • Adderbox76@lemmy.caEnglish
    60·
    2 months ago

    She’s seeing the potential writing on the wall and is attempting to come across as moderate all of a sudden so that when the Republican party purge of MAGA begins, she can hopefully be overlooked by it.

    • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      2 months ago

      This isn’t what she’s trying to do. Instead of trying to blend in with moderates, she represents a radical and extremist part of the party that she wants to paint as the true moderates in order to leverage the opinion of the republicans upon Trump’s reelection.

      The stance of tearing down speakers of the house is not new, she has railed against every speaker of the house this term for not enacting her extremist policies. What she is doing is trying to force the republican party’s hand to become more extremist because they can’t get over the line to win anything as a party without the extremists supporting them.

      I fear that many people don’t understand this move from her but it’s clear if you’ve been paying attention. The point is to sell out the rest of the party that does not side with her. Her philosophy is “MAGA party or no party” and she has a small group of 5-10 allies that also believe this. If Trump loses, the party splits along these lines. If he wins, this fascist group will suddenly represent the whole party. That’s the bet she’s making.

  • Shmandom@feddit.uk
    501·
    2 months ago

    Her voter base of Joe Rednecks don’t have a passport, and stopped paying attention to the wherabouts of their birth certificate once it got them their first gun.

    Voter suppression suddenly doesn’t feel so good, when it puts your seat on the line…

    • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
      24·
      2 months ago

      Honestly this might not even be that far off. I could see a lot of people opposing requiring presenting documents to vote because they don’t want the government to be able to track them.

  • twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    402·
    2 months ago

    Pretty hopeful news actually.

    MTG is among the most seemingly dedicated to being a horrible, bigoted piece of shit, and yet even she is recognizing that a platform of being a horrible, bigoted piece of shit is no longer serving her.

    Fuck her forever. But I’ll take this specific brand of opportunism as a positive sign.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
      16·
      2 months ago

      No it is happening because it is close to the election. Would be fucking wild to yet again convincingly prove they are incapable of governance while just weeks away. Even this hollering gibbon can see that. Any other time she would be doing the usual racist MAGA bullshit and refusing to cooperate.

    • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world
      121·
      2 months ago

      This is the difference between a normal racist and a high functioning racist that knows a failed state can’t effectively oppress the people.

    • Podunk@lemmy.world
      9·
      2 months ago

      Ill be honest, ill take it. But im so confused right now… is this how progress is supposed to happen? Its been so long. I didnt draw the line, they did, and still here we are. At something reasonable?

      Still. I must reiterate, fuck mtg, but… support her this time? Fuck.

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 months ago

        I think her deal is being outrageous, and the republican party has been pretty outrageous as of late, meaning she’s nothing special anymore. So, she’s just doing whatever gets attention now.

        Edit: read the article. She’s giving the whole game away. She must be MAD.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
    32·
    2 months ago

    Seems like we’ve reached the point where most voters realize that virtually all government shutdowns have been the Republicans’ fault.

    • BlucifersVeinyAnus@sh.itjust.works
      32·
      2 months ago

      It’s probably because preceding each shutdown they loudly proclaim that they will shut down the government and blame the dems… and then they do…

    • comador @lemmy.world
      21·
      2 months ago

      She’s up for reelection? That’s the only way I can see her actually going counter to her bullshit antics.

      • Donebrach@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        not sure if that first question was genuine or if you are an american eligible to vote, but yes, every single member of the united states House of Representatives has to be re-elected every two years and very few people seem to realize that. meanwhile Jill Stein is running for president becuase she’s a complete asshole and russian operative.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
    22·
    2 months ago

    The GOP has used the threat of a government shutdown many times to hold this country hostage. And when it comes to remembering who’s at fault for it, most of the U.S. electorate has the memory of a crack-addled ferret. But if you have a government shutdown THIS close to an election, some of them just might remember who caused it.

  • ATDA@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 months ago

    Either there’s writing on a wall or she got hit by a brontosaurus bone and thinks she’s a functioning Congressional member…

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
    12·
    2 months ago

    Never give them what they want in exchange for them doing the bare minimum. The Dems just need to send flyers to government workers whose representatives got them furloughed.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
    111·
    2 months ago

    Something smells fucky. She’s in a gerrymandered district so re-election isn’t a concerned. Presumably Trump is in too much of a froth to realize this might be a political mistake and would love the theatrically of it. It will fire up the base and keep immigration central in the election discourse.

    I don’t quite get it. But my speculation is that this is an early volley and positioning to try to get rid of Johnson soon by 1) calling him out and making him look weak, 2) forcing him to capitulate to the democrats “just like she said he would,” and 3) or he doesn’t work with the dems, and then she’s tied him more concretely to the government shutdown. Following this, I assume the crazy crew will start undermining him in the media, and then they’ll eventually vote to try to get him removed and install one of the crazy crew.

    She is absolutely too rabid to be doing this for civic-minded reasons, so something has to be going on.

    • greyfox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      Gerrymandered districts are more in danger not less. Gerrymandering is about spreading out areas which are easy wins, and instead spreading those votes over multiple districts.

      You gain more seats, but you make every race closer.