Do you really have to hand it to Marjorie Taylor Greene?

America has come to know the congresswoman from Georgia as a political pit bull who’s willing to sink her teeth into the sundry MAGA conspiracy theories that have helped President Donald Trump take over the Republican Party and the country as a whole. But in recent weeks she’s undergone something of a rehabilitation — blaming Republicans for a government shutdown and advocating the release of the Epstein files — and bucked her party’s leadership in the process.

Some people are quick to give her credit, arguing that her about-face on Trump is a sign she’s truly seen the light, awakening from her Trumpian fugue state. They’re missing the point. We aren’t watching a political renaissance or a feel-good story about deprogramming the MAGA faithful. We are watching a middle-aged career woman time the market on her political and professional ambitions. She has recognised, perhaps rightly, that there is no place for women like her in Trump’s halls of power. So she’s building herself an escape route.

Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking ahead of Donald Trump at his campaign event in Atlanta in late 2024.Credit: AP

Last week, Greene announced that she will be leaving Congress in January. She is not going quietly. A statement justifying her decision is four pages long. Her call-out of politicians from both sides of the aisle as a weak, cowardly and exploitative “political industrial complex” has a nice ring to it. But it’s all downhill from there.

She doubles down on some of the most vile, unhinged dog whistles and conspiracy theories in American politics. She blames “illegal labour” for Americans’ economic woes, defends her anti-abortion record and even works in a dig against COVID-19 vaccines. It is a rant chock-full of the same conspiracy-minded unpopular populism that Greene has been about her entire political career. Perhaps that’s because she was a true believer in the incoherent ideology that propelled Trump back to power, or because she, like so many other women, looked at Trump........

© The Sydney Morning Herald