Analysis: Republicans’ new strategy? Pointless obstruction.
So, Greene, a favorite of the Trump wing of the party, needed another way to create controversy and draw headlines. And she found it!
On Wednesday, Greene filed a motion to adjourn the House — a procedural move that forces every member to come to the floor to cast a vote to keep Congress in session. She’s done the same thing repeatedly over the last few weeks.
While an increasing number of her Republican colleagues are growing frustrated of Greene’s obstruction for obstruction’s sake, she is far from alone among congressional Republicans who seem to have settled on simply gumming up the works as their preferred strategy in the early days of the Biden administration.
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None of these maneuvers will actually do anything. The Covid-19 bill will eventually get a vote and, if Democrats stay united, pass. The House isn’t going to randomly adjourn because of Greene’s antics. And Merrick Garland is very, very likely to be the next attorney general — whether he gets a confirmation vote this week or next week. (Cotton can only slow the proceedings so much.)
This is obstruction solely to obstruct. And while obstruction has a long history in Congress (the filibuster, hello), Republicans now are playing a different game than obstructers of the past.
What they are engaging in is performative obstruction. People like Greene and Johnson and Cotton are purposely charging at windmills not in hopes of toppling them, but rather in hopes of ensuring that the party base (and its media enablers) see them charging at the windmill.
What Greene is hoping to accomplish has nothing to do with adjourning the House. She wants Fox News (and Newsmax and Breitbart, etc.) to cover her forcing all of these members to come to the House floor and cast meaningless votes. She wants to send fundraising solicitations to her national donor base touting how she forced the vote. The more members grumble about it — especially Republican ones — the better for Greene. Yet more evidence she is sticking it to the corrupt political establishment! Or something.
Trump may no longer be in office, but his performative politics linger — and continue to inform how Republicans appear to be defining success in the Biden era.
