Far-right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene might have accidentally realized Joe Biden is a good president.
The predominantly ludicrous lawmaker from Georgia did Biden an unexpected – and surely unplanned – solid this weekend in a speech at the conservative Turning Point Action conference in Florida, telling Republicans the Democratic president is fiendishly attempting to make people’s lives better.
She compared Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society,” an array of programs from the mid-1960s aimed at combating poverty in America. Those programs included Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, along with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks linking Biden to popular programs like Medicare will hurt him?
Now, I’m just a humble newspaper columnist, but it strikes me as a curious political strategy to compare the legislation of a president you despise and want to impeach with some of the most broadly popular legislation in American history.
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey from March found more than 80% of Americans have either a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” opinion of Medicare, and 76% feel the same about Medicaid.
As Greene talked about President Johnson, she said, dismissively: “His BIG socialist programs were the Great Society … big government programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and welfare.”
THAT MONSTER! Surely no politician wants to be associated with helping address education or rural poverty or transportation!
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Surely the last thing voters want is a president like Biden who is – GASP! – helping Americans
Greene continued making the case for Biden’s reelection: “Now LBJ had the Great Society, but Joe Biden had Build Back Better, and he still is working on it, the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.”
OH NO, NOT INVESTING IN SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE! HEAVEN FORFEND! INNOCENT AMERICANS MIGHT GET HELPED!
As if connecting Biden to popular social programs wasn’t enough, Greene took the high praise a step further by looping in President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the most popular presidents in American history.
I honestly wonder if a covert Biden campaign official didn’t slip this speech into Greene’s teleprompter ahead of time.
It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, so one has to expect some lies
Of course there were a few mistakes. She started out by saying Biden and Johnson are both “Democrat socialists,” which is an insult to both socialists and words. She continued the comparison by saying, “Lyndon B. Johnson was the majority leader in the Senate, does that sound familiar?”
It sounds neither familiar nor relevant, as Biden was never majority leader in the Senate.
GOP isn’t interested in Gen Z.Republican Party has abandoned young conservatives like me.
She also said Biden is trying to “complete socialism,” which doesn’t make any sense, and pointed out that “we are now $32 trillion in debt” (the debt has increased by $3.7 trillion midway through Biden’s first term, and it increased by $7.8 trillion in President Donald Trump’s one term) while lying that inflation is at a 40-year high (it was last year but has since dropped for 12 consecutive months to a two-year low in June, and America now has lower inflation than any of the other Group of Seven major industrial nations nations).
The Biden campaign should be thanking Marjorie Taylor Greene for the free campaign ad!
Pesky facts aside, Greene’s attempt to raise Biden’s profile to that of FDR and the president who launched a war on poverty and created Medicare was clearly appreciated. On Monday morning, the official White House Twitter account retweeted the video of Greene’s speech, adding: “Caught us. President Biden is working to make life easier for hardworking families.”
If Biden’s campaign officials are smart, they’ll take video of Greene’s speech, cut it into a reelection ad, run it in every market in America and cash in on the goodwill.
Thanks, Marge!
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
