Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene took her marketing campaign for a “nationwide divorce” to Fox Information on Tuesday, unveiling particulars of her plan to Sean Hannity, who appeared considerably open to the concept the US must be break up into autonomous zones as a way of avoiding a second civil warfare. “The very last thing I ever wish to see in America is a civil warfare,” the Georgia Republican informed the Fox Information host. “Nobody needs that—at the very least everybody I do know would by no means need that—nevertheless it’s going that path, and we’ve got to do one thing about it.”
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Fairly than a clear break up that might end result within the creation of two international locations, Greene’s pitch seems nearer to a type of balkanization that might enable every state to turn into a self-contained, self-governing physique. It additionally includes quickly stripping voting rights from Individuals who transfer to purple states from blue ones—a degree that Hannity, for his half, agreed with. “Banning individuals who transfer from blue states to purple states from voting for 5 years in order that they don’t convey their dangerous politics with them—I truly favor that concept,” the host stated. (The proposed voting ban dovetails with feedback Greene made earlier that day, when Turning Level USA cofounder Charlie Kirk requested Greene how Republican states may “cease” Democratic voters from “making an attempt to invade our states or our counties.”)
Within the Hannity phase, Greene additionally claimed that current conversations she’s had with aggrieved conservatives show the nation is at a breaking level. “Everybody I discuss to is sick and drained and fed up of being bullied by the left, abused by the left, and disrespected by the left,” the firebrand stated. “Our concepts, our insurance policies, our methods of life have turn into up to now aside that it’s simply coming to that time.” When requested by Hannity whether or not she expects her plan to materialize, Greene replied, “It’s one thing that we must always work in direction of as a result of it’s type of the imaginative and prescient that our founding fathers had for America, and I feel it’s a terrific one.”
Greene, who revealed her secessionist views in a Presidents’ Day tweet, has since confronted a refrain of condemnation from Democrats—and even some Republicans. Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, referred to as the lawmaker’s rhetoric “harmful and flawed and—truthfully—evil,” including, “We don’t want a divorce, we want marriage counseling. And we want elected leaders that don’t revenue by tearing us aside.” Likewise, Senator Mitt Romney, one other Utah Republican, described the notion as “madness.” Nonetheless, Cox and Romney are amongst a small group of GOP notables to criticize Greene, and most Republicans have stayed notably mum on the problem.
Since serving to Kevin McCarthy safe his hard-fought—if not Pyrrhic—victory for the Home Speakership final month, Greene has shortly turn into a number one voice within the majority. After being stripped of her committee seats in 2021, McCarthy awarded her appointments to the oversight and homeland safety committees—two extremely coveted posts. She was additionally appointed to the congressional subcommittee charged with probing the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Greene is way from the primary modern Republican to say that states have the precise to secede. In 2010, Nikki Haley, then a South Carolina gubernatorial candidate, falsely claimed that states have a constitutionally protected proper to go away the union ought to they so select, in response to a brand new report from CNN’s KFile. Haley, who launched her 2024 presidential marketing campaign this month, made the remarks throughout an interview with a “Southern tradition” advocacy group. On the time, a Accomplice battle flag was flown on the South Carolina statehouse grounds—a placement that Haley defended within the interview. “This isn’t one thing that’s racist,” she stated of the flag. “That is one thing that may be a custom that individuals really feel pleased with…. And that the flag [is] the place it’s was a compromise of all individuals that everyone ought to settle for as a part of South Carolina.”
Haley didn’t name for the flag’s removing till the summer time of 2015, after a white supremacist gunned down 9 worshippers at a historic Black church in Charleston. In response to the CNN report, Haley spokesperson Ken Farnaso informed the outlet that “Haley’s groundbreaking management on eradicating the Accomplice flag from the South Carolina Capitol grounds is well-known.”
