Pundits have offered elaborate explanations for the evolving views of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican whose resignation from Congress takes effect today, but I don't think you need a detailed theory to explain this woman's journey from QAnon acolyte to MAGA exile. You just need to recognize one central fact about her: She actually believes things. Some of the things she's believed are absurd, but that's secondary. She has beliefs, and she's willing—not always, but more often than the average D.C. pol—to put those beliefs ahead of other considerations.
You could already catch a hint of this during Greene's original 2020 congressional campaign. Back then, she attracted national attention for her past interest in QAnon, a tapestry of conspiracy theories in which President Donald Trump was supposedly secretly working with special counsel Robert Mueller to defeat a cabal of elite satanic pedophiles who consume children's blood. In those days, articles about Greene frequently linked her to another Q-friendly figure, the Colorado congressional candidate Lauren Boebert, who entered the House at the same time as Greene and eventually had a contentious falling out with her. (Greene was booted from the Freedom Caucus after she reportedly called Boebert a "little bitch.") But even in 2020, anyone paying close attention could have seen an important difference between the two candidates. Greene had actually embraced the Q worldview (though she insisted that she had come to reject it). Boebert, asked about QAnon on the conspiracist show Steel Truth, had replied by saying she "hope[d] that this is real"—a statement delicately phrased to appeal to the Q-ish voting bloc without committing her to its worldview. Boebert was playing a cynical political game. Greene, for better or for worse, was a believer.
