Marjorie Taylor Greene’s new reality

Marjorie Taylor Greene wanted everyone to know she was trying to be helpful. As Republicans feuded this month over who should lead their razor-thin House majority, the Georgia congresswoman stopped before a crowd of reporters at the U.S. Capitol and urged conservatives to unify behind her choice for speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). If they refused, Greene warned, the House gavel — that all-important prize needed to subpoena Hunter Biden and anyone else she and the GOP want to haul before the committees they will soon control — could fall in the wrong hands. Like, Democratic hands. Or even Liz Cheney’s hands. (Yes, it could happen, she insisted on a right-wing podcast.) “I will not allow that to happen,” Greene told the reporters, her tone suggesting potential danger.

“Has McCarthy promised you’ll be seated on committees next Congress?” one asked, a reference to the current Congress having stripped Greene of committee assignments because before her election to the House she had — among other things — questioned that a plane had hit the Pentagon on 9/11 and appeared to endorse social media posts about executing top Democrats. “Of course I’m going to be seated on committees!” the congresswoman said, her tone suddenly brightening. “Isn’t it silly for anyone to think I’m not going to be?” The midterms have left Greene in unfamiliar territory. House Republicans are back in power for the first time since she arrived in Washington, but just barely. Many Republicans have blamed her wing of the party — the election-denying, unabashed Trumpists — for dragging down what they had expected to be huge gains for the GOP. And yet the narrowness of the new Republican majority means that McCarthy can’t afford to alienate too many members if he wants to win the gavel when Congress convenes Jan. 3. That has created an opening for Greene, who spent her first term on Washington’s fringe, to attach herself to McCarthy and make her play for more influence, even as prominent Republicans are trying to nudge the party away from her political North Star, former president Donald Trump.