Yep, Marjorie Taylor Greene is right about D.C., but she's wrong to target Mike Johnson

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is the most conservative leader of the House of Representatives since Newt Gingrich.

He’s a Christian whose personal life is consistent with the beliefs he espouses. From a character and principle standpoint, Johnson is exactly the kind of leader Republicans have wanted for a generation.

Now, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, has moved to boot Johnson at a time when the House GOP has few votes to spare.

Greene declined to file the motion to vacate the chair as “privileged” which would have forced a vote within two legislative days. Instead, she filed it as a regular motion with an uncertain path in the House.

“I’m not saying that it won’t happen in two weeks or it won’t happen in a month or who knows when,” Greene told reporters. “But I am saying the clock has started. It is time for our conference to choose a new speaker.”

Let me put this gently, Kamikaze Republicans like Greene are deceptive show ponies hell-bent on burning President Ronald Reagan’s “big tent” to the ground.

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Democrats and Republicans are both perpetuating the D.C. problem

Over the last couple of decades, Republicans and Democrats have agreed to a basic mathematical death pact.

Democrats want to soak the rich and spend excessively. Republicans prefer to borrow from our future and spend excessively. Liberals swear off taxing the middle class without ever telling America that there aren’t enough rich people to fund their insane spending.

Republicans don’t want to tax anyone – except maybe imaginary transgender tech companies based in California who offer in-office abortions.

Yet Republicans vote for deficit spending routinely.

We should retire our representatives, both Republican and Democratic, who fail to acknowledge such a basic reality. I don’t blame anyone who is mad as hell at Washington’s fiscal failure.

But how should we respond now?

Taylor Greene seeks to burn Capitol Hill down, not to govern

Imagine for a moment that Congress is an Alaskan Airline plane flying at 16,000 feet. A hatch door blows out, and the cabin suddenly depressurizes. Bear with me, I know this sounds incredibly unlikely. The passengers are in grave danger. The pilots must reduce altitude to ensure the survival of all onboard.

If Greene and Co. are piloting the plane, they cut the engines and wait until the passengers and flight attendants agree to repair the hole that’s causing all the raucous.

Sadly, everyone perishes in a spiraling blender of metallic death.

Here’s the crazy part. Captain Greene was absolutely correct that the cause of the emergency was the hole in the plane. Nevertheless, her plan to address it causes catastrophic damage because she can’t see the need to gradually reduce altitude and land the plane safely before addressing the hatch door.

Past shutdowns have been shortsighted in the long run

Shutting down the government until folks agree to draconian spending cuts would send our artificially juiced economy into a tailspin. Many conservatives cheer at the thought because Greene’s Kamikaze Caucus has lied to them.

Shutdown politics sounds good, right? Cut off the spending altogether, and we’ll quickly get back on track.

Wrong.

The last time our federal government ran a surplus was 2001. We can’t materially reduce the national debt until we have a surplus. We can’t have a surplus until revenues exceed outlays. Right now, spending exceeds revenues by roughly $1.5 to $2 trillion every fiscal year.

The longest federal government shutdown in history only lasted 35 days during the Trump administration, and we always end up offering back pay when they’re over. In case you missed it, the shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 did not set America on a sane fiscal path. In other words, the Kamikazes are presently attacking the Republicans who aren’t interested in giving federal bureaucrats a taxpayer funded vacation.

Speaker Johnson made a rational choice at a time of few alternatives

Even if Greene got her way, she’s simply ignoring the economic shock of cutting trillions of dollars cold turkey. She doesn’t care because she’s not serious about governing. She is quite dedicated to getting attention. Telling people lies they want to hear is so much easier than explaining uncomfortable truths.

Should we accept our current fiscal situation at the federal level? Absolutely not.

We need to have a thoughtful plan to move in a positive direction. Conservative Republicans simply don’t have the numbers to push for radical spending cuts right now. Incremental gains and bipartisan compromises are the best options we have without winning more elections.

Instead, the Kamikaze Caucus is hell bent on crashing the congressional plane. Johnson is left with the option of working with Democrats or going along with Greene’s suicide pact. He made a rational choice, so Greene responded with a privileged motion to oust him. If she can’t take down the plane, she’ll side with Democrats to remove the most conservative speaker in a generation.

The bottom line is that Republicans can’t accomplish the conservative fiscal reforms we want without adding people to the party and expanding our House majority.

Greene and the Kamikazes want to get rid of the Republicans we already have. We can’t do both. A safe landing sounds much better than Greene’s deadly metallic blaze of glory.

USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney who worked for conservative Republicans. He and his wife Justine are raising three boys in Nolensville, Tennessee. Direct outrage or agreement to smith.david.cameron@gmail.com or @DCameronSmith on X, formerly known as Twitter. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor to letters@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a mistake to target Speaker Mike Johnson