It’s bad enough for elected officials to look the other way rather than confront an entirely disreputable person in their midst. It’s worse for them to embrace that person as a martyr for their cause.

That’s what the campaign arm of the House Freedom Caucus, an influential group of the most right-wing members of Congress, is doing by sending solicitations for campaign funds for putative Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Despite Greene’s ever-growing list of ethically degenerate statements and actions, the House Freedom Fund last weekend sent an email solicitation saying Greene is among “the toughest, grittiest, most principled fighters” in Washington. The missive says that “100% of your contribution” will go to help Greene win.

It also says you can “donate directly to her campaign through the House Freedom Fund,” which, by definition, is not true. First, if the money goes through the fund, it obviously does not go directly to Greene’s campaign. Second, there is a $5,000 limit on what a political action committee can donate directly to a candidate’s campaign, so if this solicitation raises more than that, obviously some of the help for Greene will be still more indirect (or illegal).

What’s worse than the solicitation’s dishonesty is its choice of Greene as a beneficiary and, in effect, as a martyr. Granted, its verbiage technically is aimed against legally ludicrous attempts to disqualify Greene from the ballot altogether, but if that were really the purpose of the fundraiser, the money would go to a legal defense fund for the congresswoman, not to her campaign.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene has been fighting harder than anyone to expose the Left's lies and protect America from their woke, socialist conspiracy,” says the letter. “She has answered the bell on all of the big issues.” And: “The media, corporate elites, and Republican insiders want Marjorie Taylor Greene gone. Why? Because she's effective.”

Later, it says she is among the “true conservatives who defend American culture and the rule of law.”

Greene is anything but a true conservative. She is instead a radical’s radical who doesn’t defend American culture but poisons it. By now, every member of the Freedom Caucus surely knows the vast litany of Greene’s hateful behavior.

To start with, Greene is at least an enthusiastic fellow traveler with vociferously antisemitic white supremacists. In February, she spoke at a conference organized by notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who joined the 2017 protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, where torch-holding attendees yelled viciously antisemitic slogans. At this year’s conference, Fuentes and his followers cheered Russian President Vladimir Putin and called the attack on the U.S. Capitol “awesome.” In her own remarks, Greene said she was “tragically heartbroken” to be a member of today’s Congress, because “everything this Congress does — is evil.”

The antisemitism is not new from Greene, who once seriously spread a theory blaming California forest fires on a “space laser” financed by Jewish banking interests. That was just one of the things she has said and done that's carried far more than mild whiffs of racism, antisemitism, and lunatic conspiracy theories.

Greene’s list of vile idiocies is almost endless, including her continuing to suggest right up until President Joe Biden’s inauguration that then-President Donald Trump should impose “marshall law” [sic] to remain in office.

Greene is a menace. All of her colleagues, especially all Republicans because their party’s name is besmirched by her, should be working to defeat her reelection campaign. Instead, the House Freedom Caucus members are raising money for her and holding her up as their champion.

This is sickening. They should desist.