For the last decade or so, Democrats have pretended we would welcome MAGA fans to the tent if they just denounced Donald Trump. This is both nonsense and also pretty awful, as we don’t really agree with them on much as a matter of policy. For instance, it was a mistake to embrace Liz Cheney. Her fight against Donald Trump was admirable and honorable, but let’s be serious for a second- she’s a Neo-conservative hawk on foreign policy, pro-life, refused to even embrace her LGBTQ sister’s marriage, and no friend of the environment, unions, or expanded access to health care. What exactly did we agree with her on in 2024 besides Donald Trump’s personally being awful. That’s fine in the context of a campaign, where voters have to choose between two options. Voting against Trump because he’s a pig is reasonable. There are people though that wanted to make Cheney Defense Secretary, and still others who said she should be on a “unity ticket” for President. What exactly is that kind of administration going to do? Sort of ban abortion? Kind of drill for oil in protected lands in Alaska? Attack a Middle Eastern country “in a way?”

Words I never thought I’d write- I respect Marjorie Taylor Greene’s opposition to Trump lately, be it on Epstein or other political matters. I do think she’s bothered by the Epstein situation (I think out of some misconceptions, but that’s fine because she’s morally right here), and her opposition to Trump and Johnson is at a personal and political cost to herself. Do I think she is also trying to rebrand herself because she either thinks or knows (God knows what she’s seen) that Trump is potentially toxic, but I don’t hate that as much as I should. Again, we spent a decade telling them we’d welcome them. Now we’re sort of stuck at least defending her against threats of violence and retaliation from Trump and his followers.

Don’t mistake MTG’s areas of sanity with agreement though. She’s right in the above meme, creating a 50 year mortgage to deal with housing problems is just piling more debt onto consumers to solve the issue. MTG still doesn’t agree though that the issue is that workers are getting a smaller and smaller share of a bigger and bigger pie, and that the wealthy, corporations, and bosses are pocketing too much money. Don’t kid yourself, she won’t call on taxing Elon Musk at a higher rate, creating a windfall tax, or raising wages. So sure, I appreciate her being kind of right on housing and opposing really bad policy decisions. I’d even work with her on that if I were a member of Congress. She’s not ready to embrace good policy though either.

Democrats should at least welcome that MTG and hopefully other Republicans might consider abandoning the most regressive portions of Trumpism, and maybe even Trump himself. We should defend them from his cronies and crooks who attack them. We shouldn’t forget that this woman once talked about Jewish space lasers and wild fires together in the same sentence. I’m glad she sees the light and respect whatever humanity is in her. This isn’t the beginnings of an alliance though.