Mean Girls in the House

By JAMIE STIEHM

WASHINGTON — So have you seen the new movie musical, “Mean Girls”? Here in Washington, we see that show for free in the Capitol.

House Republicans seem to attract adult versions of Mean Girls.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is an excellent example, but she’s not alone. Spitting fire, Greene comes from central casting if Hollywood options a grown-up sequel to the plot.

Pitiless Greene actually produced, um, naked pictures of Hunter Biden in a House hearing. She shocked colleagues and created a new low in how far political strife would go.

Speaking with a flat accent and a laser tongue, Greene is already starting to cut into the new Speaker of the House, fellow Southerner Mike Johnson, R-La.

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik cuts a savvy, formidable figure. She squelched host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” by referring to the hundreds charged with Jan. 6 crimes as “hostages.” That is, of course, Trumpian rhetoric. She makes no secret of her love for Donald Trump.

Third in the House Republican leadership, Stefanik rose to media stardom by crushing two of three university presidents testifying before Congress. She demanded to know if speaking of Jewish genocide violated university free speech.

Their tepid responses to Stefanik’s drilling were weak, but her hostile tone brought back the days of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Soon after, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, were shown the door and forced to resign.

(Why you gotta be so mean, Elise?)

And how could I forget gun-totin’ Lauren Boebert of Rifle, Colorado? She’s earned a special place for being the most insolent House freshman in the Congressional Record. They used to know their place.

On Jan. 6, 2021, moments before the mob insurrection, she stood to address “Madam Speaker” (Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat) and declared, “I have constituents outside this building right now.”

That was Boebert’s first day on the job. That statement was tantamount to a threat. I was there in the tense chamber, where her words chilled the air.

In June, Boebert missed an important vote on the debt ceiling, running toward the night-lit Capitol in dress heels: too little, too late.

More than most, Boebert early laid the ground for the historic ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., staunchly opposing his election. Her rump group forced McCarthy to bargain that any one Republican member could move to “vacate” the speaker’s position. Even then, she refused to support him.

(In McCarthy’s beginning was his embarrassing exit.)

Boebert causes such chaotic scenes in the House and at home (kicked out of a “Beetlejuice” event in Denver for vaping and groping her companion) that she is switching districts, sinking too low in her own to win.

These three are a new generation of “Mean” among Republican women, but there’s an older one. You don’t want to get on the bad side of 80-year-old Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. When cross, Foxx looks like she might box your ears.

In a press event where House Republicans gathered round McCarthy’s successor, Speaker Johnson, you can see Stefanik and Boebert craning to be in the center of the photo-op.

But Foxx stole the show. A reporter asked Johnson about his building a dubious legal case against Joe Biden’s rightful election as president.

“Shut up!” Foxx snapped.

House Republicans roared in approval. But silencing the press at a turning point in the ongoing House opera is no joke.

Circling back to Greene, she takes first prize in “Mean,” seldom seen or heard not attacking someone.

The Georgia congresswoman started a censure for the first Palestinian American woman in the House, Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat; now she presses for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment over the Southern border crossings impasse.

Meanwhile, the House’s unfinished homework is piling up.

Greene even swore at Boebert on the House floor in a nasty spat.

On another day, she presided over the lawmakers’ chamber and pounded the gavel.

“The House will be in order,” Greene shouted.

For a mordant moment, the entire House of Representatives broke into laughs: not with the rabble-rouser, but at her.

Jamie Stiehm is a former assignment editor at CBS News in London, reporter at The Hill, metro reporter at the Baltimore Sun and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is author of a new play, “Across the River,” on Aaron Burr. See JamieStiehm.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2024

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