In her Georgia district, voters saw Ms. Greene as a conservative voice that would be impossible to ignore. Now the revelation of past social media posts has unsettled some who backed her.
SUMMERVILLE, Ga. — Billy Martin does not care much for politicians. But the retired teacher and coach liked what he heard from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who promised to arrive in Washington as a defiant force, intent on rattling the establishment.
For his community in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, which he believed had long been overlooked, Ms. Greene had a voice that was impossible to ignore.
But in recent weeks, it has also been impossible to ignore the torrent of troubling social media posts and videos in which Ms. Greene had endorsed violent behavior, including executing Democratic leaders, and spread an array of conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., were hoaxes.
“Sometimes people say things they regret, speak before they think,” Mr. Martin said as he got in his pickup in downtown Summerville, a town of 4,300 people represented by Ms. Greene, a Republican who was elected to Congress in November in an unopposed race that drew national attention because of her promotion of the pro-Trump movement QAnon.
He found her posts and statements puzzling. Still, he added, he was not sure what to believe. “I don’t think they treat you fairly anymore,” Mr. Martin said, referring to the news media and Democratic politicians.
As Democrats push to strip Ms. Greene of committee assignments and as some Republicans condemn her statements, she has argued that the resistance confronting her only “strengthens my base of support at home and across the country.”
To some degree, that was true, as her most fervent supporters saw in the treatment of Ms. Greene a reminder of all that they loathed about Washington. But in a congressional district proud of its ranking as one of the most conservative in the country, voters drawn to her unapologetic intensity were now also brushing the limits of their support.
“It’s embarrassing,” Ashley Shelton, a stay-at-home mother who voted for Ms. Greene, said of the controversy. She thought former President Donald J. Trump would serve another term and saw Ms. Greene as “a backup, a comfort.”
“I think she’s kind of a loose cannon,” Ms. Shelton said before paraphrasing a line from the Old Testament: “The wise are the quiet ones,” she said. “The more she opens her mouth, the less evidence of her wisdom.”
Georgia has been gripped by a political tug of war, as the once reliably Republican state was won by President Biden in November, the first Democrat to do so in nearly three decades. And last month, the state’s two Republican senators were replaced by Democrats, tilting control of the Senate to that party.
Ms. Greene’s district represents the other end of the rope — a largely white and rural corner of the state dominated by Republicans. Sprawled across a dozen counties, the 14th Congressional District reaches from the outer suburbs of Atlanta to the outskirts of Chattanooga.
Despite her promotion of conspiracy theories during the tightly contested primary and runoff, Republicans said Ms. Greene gained traction by hewing to core conservative themes — defending gun rights, opposing immigration and supporting Mr. Trump. She covered a lot of ground, too, sometimes attending as many as five campaign events in a day.
“A lot of people here feel like they really know her,” said Luke Martin, a local prosecutor and chairman of the Republican Party in Floyd County, which is in her district. “They’ve met her. They’ve spoken with her. She never talked about that stuff. It’s kind of confusing to a lot of people. The person they think they know is not this person.”
The recent cascade of past social media posts, which also included a conspiracy theory that a space laser controlled by Jewish financiers started a California wildfire, Luke Martin said, has weakened her support. “You can’t justify it,” he said of her statements and social media activity. “It’s indefensible.”
But local Democrats contend that Republicans should not have been surprised. Some have written letters to the editor of newspapers in the district calling for her to step down.
“I didn’t think she was fit for office back then,” John Lugthart, who wrote one of the letters published in The Daily Citizen-News in Dalton, said of his opinions of Ms. Greene during the election. “More and more has come out, and my hope is that many others in our district now realize she’s not the one to represent us.”
Others, having long been resigned to the minority position held by Democrats in the region, said they hoped an infusion of energy in the party could bolster its chances in the next election.
But emotion filled Teresa Rich’s voice as she stood outside the radiator shop she owns with her husband, bemoaning the way Ms. Greene has been treated and the failure of other Republicans to adequately defend her.
“I love her,” she said of Ms. Greene, describing her as a fighter taking on the political establishment. “She fought them. If the party was like it was supposed to be, she wouldn’t be in a corner by herself.”
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February 04, 2021 at 05:00PM
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‘It’s Embarrassing’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Tests the Limits of Some Voters - The New York Times
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