WASHINGTON – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is a lot of things, but she’s not a “normal” congresswoman on Capitol Hill.
Normalized by House Republican leaders this session, sure.
But not the norm.
Yet.
Just ask freshman Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), who’s sponsoring a new — and probably hopeless — effort to censure Greene.
“How do we break this cycle of extremism?” Balint told Raw Story on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. “We can’t continue to normalize it.”
Balint’s message isn’t in response to the myriad censure resolutions Republicans have proposed during this hyper-political non-election year. It’s also not in response to the actual censure of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who was censured in June on an along-party-line vote for “misleading the American public” and “conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives” in relation to his efforts to investigate now-former President Donald Trump.
And while the resolution only names the unrepentant Georgian who rakes in millions of campaign dollars off her perpetual bomb throwing ways, it’s also not only aimed at MTG.
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Balint hopes to wake up the denizens of the nation’s wayward political capital — from Speaker Kevin McCarthy to her own Democratic leaders — to what she considers reality, one where distortions, deceit and perpetual dunking is derided, not rewarded.
“I’ve just had enough – just had enough. And it’s just not normal. It’s not,” Balint said on a swampier than usual summer day. “And all of us who don’t say anything, we are part of the problem.”
As a freshman, Balint lacks the seniority that fuels this power hungry town, but she’s equipped with something most veteran politicians, pundits and many in the nation’s beleaguered political press corps seem to lack: fresh eyes.
And she said she saw clearly last week — and we’re not talking about Hunter Biden’s barely redacted junk, which she displayed on posters earlier this month during a congressional hearing.
“The juxtaposition last week of the pornography and committing to needling him never mind trying to work on behalf of flood victims, like — it was just too much,” she said.
Early tallies are that freak storm waters earlier this month wreaked havoc on upward of 4,000 homes, 800 businesses and roughly 10,000 acres of farmland (i.e., people’s livelihoods) in Balint’s tiny state, the nation’s sixth smallest by land and water area.
Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) says she’s not afraid to go after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in an effort to censure her. Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Small, yes, but sprawling and sparse when you hit its largely unpopulated back roads.
Balint knows them well. She’s an educator, by trade and nature, cutting her teeth teaching in some of Vermont’s rural middle schools where she learned the wisdom of youth.
That’s partly why she’s fed up with MTG’s “antics,” as she calls them.
“I have my own kids. They want to know, like, I come home every Friday, ‘what important work are you doing?’” Balint said. (Ever the educator, the teacher did stop to scold herself for saying ‘like’.)
While MTG’s perpetual soundbite- and donation-driven ways embarrass many, there’s one person who’s never batted an eye: the Georgia congresswoman herself.
During a House vote Wednesday, as Raw Story asked MTG about Balint’s censure resolution, we were initially cut off by a young tourist who approached Greene.
“Do you hate me because I’m Jewish?” he asked.
MTG didn’t answer, and moved away from the young man, who was wearing a Rush band T-shirt.
“No comment on the censure resolution against you?” Raw Story asked, as MTG showed us the back of her hand as her communications staff laughed.
“Nothing? Just hand up?” we asked, not even getting waved off in our second attempt to discuss her.
Greene may not want to pause and contemplate Balint’s accusations, but the freshman from Vermont can’t not think about the Congress she’s now helping steer through her close relationship with McCarthy and former President Donald Trump.
That includes being the name and face on a series of National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising emails — solicitations that underscore how much of a draw she is for the GOP’s small-dollar donor base.
Balint may be new to Washington, but she’s not new to politics. In 2014, she became the first lesbian elected to the Vermont legislature. She then climbed up the proverbial ladder, becoming Senate majority leader and eventually elected as president pro tempore. She didn’t lead from behind — she led from the humility that accompanies any honest glance in even a poorly-polished mirror.
“Nobody’s perfect. I’m not. I don’t expect perfection from my staff or from my colleagues, but this is next level,” Balint said. “And there’s never any comment from the speaker’s office. Not when she yelled obscenities at the president. Not when – there’s never anything.”
The ways of Washington are largely foreign to Vermonters, which is why Balint wants to instill the Vermont spirit in Washington.
“‘I go home to Vermont and they say, ‘Is it as bad as we think?’ I say, ‘No. It’s worse. It’s worse than you think,’” Balint said.
For now, at least, which the educator hopes to change. One censure resolution at a time. Though she hopes she only has to teach this lesson once, even if the chances of it resulting in Greene’s censure are small in the Republican-controlled House.
“Every time nobody says anything – and I get it, there’s that tension of not wanting to draw more attention to it … when norms are upended and eroded, you should be scared,” Balint said. “When we allow things to go unchecked they become norms.”
