Although I usually find legislative processes to be a good remedy for insomnia, I followed the attempt by the often entertaining — especially when she doesn’t intend to be — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to revive the Hastert rule until it crashed and burned. House Speaker Mike Johnson easily blocked an ill-planned attempt by his GOP colleague from Georgia to oust him from his position.
And that’s a good thing, too, if you believe Congress has a bigger job to do than help grandstanders such as Greene, a star in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, cash in on what has become known widely as the “attention economy.” Although Johnson’s conservatism is solid enough to cause alarm in Democratic circles, Greene has found him not right-wing enough. Greene called for his ouster if he did not meet her list of policy demands.
Reports from behind closed doors in their talks revealed that she and her less camera-hungry ally Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, presented a list of policy demands on some very important issues They included a cutoff in aid to Ukraine, a defunding of the special counsel probes of Trump and a return to the Hastert rule, named for disgraced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Hastert, you may recall, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in a hush money case that revealed he was being accused of sexually abusing young boys while he was a teacher in Yorkville, Illinois.
His “rule,” which was never a formal rule, as much as Republica.