As the GOP devolves into an entertainment product for people too stupid for scripted television, it was destined that a "cat fight" storyline would develop. Ladies tearing into each other is a perennial favorite of lizard brain-based TV programming, from pro wrestling to trashy reality shows. As people whose brains were entirely formed by cultural trash, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., have started to claw at each other, instinctually understanding the spectacle their Fox News-loving fans crave.
The Daily Beast's Zachary Petrizzo has the dirt. In an article headlined "The Standoff Between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert Is Worse Than You Think," he details how the once-friendly duo of camera-hogging extremists have turned on each other. It's not just that Greene called Boebert a "little bitch" on the floor of the House of Representatives. Boebert was apparently a major force driving Greene's ouster from the House Freedom Caucus. When Petrizzo caught up with Greene to ask her about this, she sniped, "Dude, do you do anything besides report on complete drama and bullshit?"
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To be fair, it's only the second dumbest thing a Republican said all week. (The first is Donald Trump Jr. claiming manically, "I don't snort cocaine, it's not my thing.")
That Greene and Boebert would be pitted against each other was fate.
Greene's instinct for drama is what makes her such a powerhouse in the circus-like atmosphere that the modern GOP thrives in. It really is remarkable that she ended up in Congress instead of on the "Real Housewives" franchise. As Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told the Daily Beast, as a "professional wrestling fan" he enjoys thinking "that a fistfight could break out at any movement." Boebert and Greene are famous and popular within the GOP because they hate drama as much as Donald Trump Jr. hates cocaine.
Even back in 2022, when Boebert and Greene presented as a Karen power duo out to heckle President Joe Biden, I was skeptical that their alliance would last long. As a rule, Republicans loathe each other and will stab each other in the back at a moment's notice. But their feud, in particular, was inevitable for a deeper reason: The world of MAGA celebrities, being deeply sexist, only has a single slot for a woman. The whole point of being the token woman is that there can only be one.
In the 90s, feminist writer Katha Pollitt wrote about the "Smurfette principle" in the New York Times: "A group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined." She was talking about children's entertainment, which routinely portrayed a world so male-dominated you'd think women are only 1-2% of the population. But the problem she flagged, where there was only ever one slot for a woman, was all over pop culture at the time. Female pop singers or rappers were pitted against each other as if only one at a time could be on the Billboard charts. The "It Girl" of Hollywood necessarily implied no other starlet could be ascendant. As for politics, well, the fact that five whole women got elected to the Senate in 1992 was so mind-blowing that it was deemed "The Year of the Woman."
Patriarchy depends on women fighting each other for scraps.
These days, things are far from equitable, but in most of the culture, female representation has grown well past the Smurfette-style tokenism. Over 40% of Democrats in Congress are women now. The Billboard Hot 100 is dominated by female artists like SZA, Taylor Swift, and Dua Lipa. Some of the biggest movies of the year, from "The Little Mermaid" to "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" to "Barbie" are female-led. And while some popular kids shows still pretend the world is 90% male, others like "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir" and "My Little Pony" put girl characters front and center.
This kind of "women are people, too" mentality gets dismissed as "wokeism" by Republicans, whose entire existence is about hanging onto the bad old days. So there is no way are that they ever going to cultivate an internal party culture where more than one woman can be a MAGA superstar. Patriarchy depends on women fighting each other for scraps. Keeping women hating each other prevents them from teaming up to take on the real enemy, i.e. the men that keep them down. That Greene and Boebert would be pitted against each other was fate.
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Of course, both Greene and Boebert are too committed to upholding a sexist system to notice that they're being used and manipulated, even as the male Republicans who are encouraging this fight crow about it to the Daily Beast. But the jealousy and artificial scarcity that is fueling their enmity is not hard to spot. Greene lashed out at Boebert for supposedly "copying" her impeach-Biden idea, as if there was a hard limit on how much silly nonsense congressional Republicans are allowed to get into in a year. (Anyone who sees the bullshit-manufacturing machine run by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. knows that lies are an infinitely renewable resource on the right.) In turn, Boebert really embraced the view that the Freedom Caucus didn't have room for two loudmouth, camera-hogging women, which means Greene had to go.
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For Republicans, the ideal is the Supreme Court, where there is one woman, one Black man, and everyone else on the GOP side is a white guy. That's the point of tokenism, to create "proof" your team isn't racist or sexist, while, in reality, maintaining a system where the lion's share of power remains in the hands of white men. This is how they've done things for years now, and no one on the right has any interest in real inclusivity.
It was always obvious there can only be one MAGA queen. The issue right now is there are a lot of women vying for the role, and getting it means eliminating the competition. No wonder failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has all but moved out of Arizona to practically live at Mar-a-Lago. If she has any hope of being the winner of this deeply sexist race, it depends on getting Donald Trump to pick her like this is a MAGA beauty pageant. No doubt they've all learned from the fall of Sarah Palin, once the It Girl for right-wing trolls. As her loss in Alaska's House race last year shows, Palin's been pushed out to make room for one of these younger women wanting to be the token lady Trumpist. If they can't snag the crown, then they know they'll be just like her: taken out with the trash.
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