North Carolina-- Mucho Importante

Thom Tillis is WAY too scared to ever criticize Trump again

There will be a huge focus on North Carolina next year. First of all it's a swing state that Obama won in 2008 and where Trump is underwater in polling now (-3 according to the June Morning Consult update). There's virtually no path to victory for Trump without North Carolina's 15 electoral votes. He's flying there for one of his hate rallies tomorrow. And then there's a Senate election, with Republican incumbent Thom Tillis widely considered vulnerable. The last statewide election (2017) was won by Democrat, now-Governor Roy Cooper. And last year Democratic congressional candidates held two Republicans down below the safety level:

• NC-02- George Holding- 51.3%
• NC-13- Ted Budd- 51.5%

And that doesn't account for a virtual tie-- yet to be decided-- in the 9th district. And massive turmoil inside the North Carolina Republican Party, possibly resulting in a less effective political machine.

So... the editorial headline yesterday in one of the state's biggest newspapers, the Raleigh News & Observer, Are you OK with a racist president, Republicans?, packed a potent wallop for Republicans at every level. The paper, bought by Josehus Daniels in 1894, who reveled in it's reputation as "the militant voice of White Supremecy." Daniels himself said that "the greatest folly and crime" in U.S. history was giving negros the vote. He used the paper in "a campaign of prejudice, bitterness, vilification, misrepresentation, and exaggeration to influence the emotions of the whites against the Negro." The paper has changed over the years. Yesterday the editors wrote that they don't "believe in public officials being responsible for all the bad things other public officials say or do. It’s become a too-common political weapon to ask lawmakers to condemn members of their own party, even for behavior that’s not representative of anything more than one person’s poor decision. But sometimes that behavior is so troubling that our leaders need to stand up and say something."

However Trump's "go back where you come from" tweet was too much for the paper. The editors call it "among the worst of racist tropes. It divides us by ethnicity and skin color. It says that even if someone is a citizen or legal immigrant, they are not part of the rest of us. That runs contrary to who we should be as Americans, and if Donald Trump didn’t know it when he typed the words, he surely did later when people responded with appropriate outrage. But the same president who referred to Haiti and African nations as 'shithole countries' and said African visitors would never 'go back to their huts' once again doubled down on his racism. It’s dangerous, destructive behavior, and at the least every Republican lawmaker in Congress should declare as much about their president’s outburst. That includes North Carolina’s most senior leaders, Senators. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis. We know this isn’t easy politically, especially for Tillis, who is running for reelection and faces a Republican primary challenger in a race to see who can embrace the president more fully. Tillis, of course, has a history of comically wavering on Trump-- standing up then backing down on issues that include the Mueller investigation and the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

[T]he Republican Party is firmly Donald Trump’s party now. It’s the party where insults and other ugliness are just being “rough around the edges.” It’s the party where locking legal migrants in crowded, unhealthy cages is acceptable immigration policy. It’s the party where it’s OK to say racist things so long as the next jobs report is encouraging.

If you don’t believe it, listen to the meekness today from Republicans, including those who represent our state. Instead of standing up for who we should be, they’re bowing to the worst of who we are.

I feel pretty sure Trump will be able to count on, at the very least, strong backup from North Carolina's worst racists and xenphobes, Mark Meadows, Mark Walker, Virginia Foxx, Patrick McHenry, Richard Hudson and David Rouzer, all lockstep 100% Trump enablers.