It was a PR ploy as well as an indulgent if accurate self-description when John McCain was dubbed a “maverick” as he ran for president against Barack Obama in 2008. Notably in that campaign as well, the figure of the female maverick came to the fore in the form of Sarah Palin; it was hard to tell what she might say next, which at least kept you listening.
I like rebels, non-conformists, and dissenters, and believe in my heart that Americans should be like that. I'm not the only one who thinks this, as characters known as “Maverick” infest popular culture, played by people like James Garner, Mel Gibson (who may have kissed Jodie Foster in the process), and Tom Cruise. It's true that McCain and Palin lost. Maybe they'd have lost less badly with less maverick. It's hard to tell, but I think “maverick” was worth 10 polling points or so, and was the main reason the election was almost close.
We’re all potential mavericks, and you might wonder how to establish and burnish your reputation as a rebel and a renegade (though let me warn you that you might well be committing career suicide, admirable as your are). Vociferous advocacy of the conventional positions of your party or faction isn’t going to do the job. The way that McCain, not to speak of Garner, established his maverick status was by attacking the positions and the politicians of his own side. Then you're risking something, and no maverick is risk-averse.
This brings us to the magnificent maverick of now, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or as Trump has taken to calling her, "Marjorie Traitor Greene." In a party that’s become slavish, in a situation in which dozens of eminent politicians (Marco Rubio, for example, or Lindsey Graham) have pretty much abandoned all their previous apparent convictions to agree with Trump and abandoned all their pride and manliness to praise him continuously, Greene dares to pilot her own epistemic craft.
Greene’s criticized US support for the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza. The latter has been fraught, as her party has come to the conclusion that any criticism of Israel's conduct of the war amounts to anti-Semitism. She supported Democratic calls to extend Obamacare supplemental payments. She’s relentlessly pushed for everything the US government ever knew about Jeffrey Epstein to be made public, whether it hurts Trump and other Republicans or not. She’s criticized sexism within the Republican Party and the Trump coalition.
Trump in the last week has called MTG "a ranting Lunatic" and a "traitor." He says he's stopped taking her calls. She’s said that she's received threats from Trump's "trolls, many of whom are paid."
People who agree with their own party all the time or just reflect its talking points today have a slavishness problem and a redundancy problem: there’s no real reason to listen to any such person as opposed to any other. They seek to expunge or erase themselves into a group. They appear to have no subjectivity, and to some extent, despite any vociferousness they might manifest, they seem to have no convictions. If their faction switched around (and the Dems and Reps switch around all the time), they'd just switch with them.
I may disagree with MTG's convictions or think they’re not liable to enhance her career or her party's success. And yet I can see that she has convictions. I can see this because she takes risks for the positions she advocates. Being called a traitor and a lunatic by Trump, common wisdom had it until last week, is likely to be politically fatal to any Republican, in the most direct way, and Trump has already said he will primary her next year. MTG says what she thinks she ought to say, even as the death threats start coming.
Despite the fact that I disagree with much of what she’s said over the years, I respect that about her: unlike Graham, she has convictions. Sometimes someone like that might run off the rails, but on the other hand she's a lot more real than most politicians. If you vote for Rubio, you have no idea what you're getting; he'll take whatever positions serve his ambitions this week. If you vote for MTG, you're getting MTG, maverick.
Plus, like Tom Cruise, she does her own stunts and she's in better shape than you.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell