The math on expelling Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert
I keep getting questions about whether Marjorie Taylor Greene and/or Lauren Boebert will end up being expelled from the House. I can’t give you a yes or no, but I can give you a simple answer.
First, it would take a two-thirds vote to expel anyone. So no, Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats can’t make it happen on their own, and there’s no magic wand that’ll get them there. It’ll come down entirely to whether there are enough House Republican votes for expulsion. Right now there are definitely not, and it’s not even close. But yes, that could change.
At this point there is only one thing that House Republicans care about, and that’s keeping their own seats. They’re all up for reelection late next year. Any decisions they make about whether to expel Greene and Boebert will be based solely on whether House Republicans think it’ll make them more or less likely to keep their own seats.
So if Marjorie Taylor Greene’s scandals end up getting so ugly that House Republicans start to worry they’ll lose their own seats in 2022 by keeping her around, or that they’ll lose too much money in corporate donations by keeping her around, that’s the scenario where they’ll dump her. With today’s Republicans, the math always comes down to their own selfish self-interest. There are no other factors.
