Wednesday, June 24, 2020

If you're a Republican running for office, it might be a good idea to refuse the President's help......

Tuesday's Republican Congressional primary in North Carolina provided a shocking result.

After Mark Meadows gave up his seat to become President Trump's current chief of staff (read: future firing), he & Trump tapped a family friend of his, Lynda Bennett, to run in a primary, with the winner advancing to the general election in November against the Democratic candidate.

However, GOP voters in Tar Heel Country, which lost out on August's national convention because Trump threw a tantrum when told he couldn't fill an arena for the event due to coronavirus, could see that Trump, more so than Meadows, had given Bennett, a real estate agent by trade, the kiss of death with his endorsement.

Meet the GOP candidate, Madison Cawthorn, 24, who has survived partial paralysis from an accident at 18....

Madison Cawthorn

25 is the minimum age for running for Congress, and Cawthorn turns 25 in August, just in time for the convention, so that should quell any arguments over eligibility. And, danged if he don't look like a dead ringer for Pat Boone-----70 years ago.

The upside for Cawthorn is great. He doesn't want help from GOP Super PAC's or any lobbyists, relying on his faith. That's the good news. The bad? Trump will give him the kiss of death, sometime around the convention......

6 comments:

magicdog said...

It's nice to see young blood in the ring, but I don't know enough about the kid to know how he'll handle things if he makes it to the general election.

From what I understand, the party dictates what goes, so even if he has the best intentions, the GOP bigwigs will likely tell him how to vote, etc. The DNC does it too, which is part of the problem with US politics. I do wish the kid luck and I applaud his trying to remain relatively independent by keeping clear of lobbyists et al.

hobbyfan said...

He is a Trump supporter, but apparently isn't drinking the Kool-Aid. He has advanced to the general election for the seat that Meadows gave up, but if Trump publicly throws his support to the kid, it's over.

Mike Doran said...

Old Joke:

What's the difference between Democrats and Republicans?
Democrats fall in love.
Republicans fall in line.


What you have to remember about anti-Trump Republicans like the Lincoln Project (and this guy you're writing about here) is that they're still conservatives.
What they don't like about Trump is that he isn't conservative enough.
Or worse yet, that he isn't really a conservative at all.
Do you really think that George Will and others like him have suddenly seen the leftish light?
People like this want their GOP back - they feel that Trump has wrecked the brand (which is a Trump trademark, if you give it a review).
One of my own nightmare scenarios goes like this:
When/if the GOP convention happens (in whatever form), the Traditional Repubs will stage an intervention (like the '74 one against Nixon) to try and get Trump to quit on his own.
Do you see Trump doing that? As If.
There's a real possibility that the GOP will split - Trumpkins on one side, TradDads on the other - making a three-way race in November.
And if that happens, and the two GOPs are evenly divided -
- one possibility would be that there would be no winner.
None of the three 'parties' would carry enough states to get to 270 - which throws the Presidency into the House of Representatives.
Where it's not the head count that counts, but the number of states (I told you that this is a nightmare scenario).
Oh, by the way, the Vice-President would be selected by the Senate - a straight head count, meaning that if the GOP still has a numerical majority, Mike Pence gets the nod, no matter who gets (or doesn't get) the top job.
None of this is likely, but all of it is possible.
and that's something we should all think about.

hobbyfan said...

Mike:

Trump, like the manchild he is, wants to have the convention at a physical location to satisfy his ego. The Democrats, to their credit, plan on a virtual convention in Milwaukee to officially ordain Joe Biden as their candidate. The only place Trump belongs now is in a sanitarium.......! He won't give up his precious power base without a fight.

Silverstar said...

The possible good (or at least less bad) news is that now that Commander Clorox is amping up his racism (since stirring hate and division is the one thing he's genuinely good at), some of the TradDads and traditional Republican voters are slowly but gradually starting to inch away from Tangerine Man. Sen. Tom Thune has opined that he wishes Grump would try to be less racist--not because it's the right thing to do of course, but because it's hurting his chances at re-election, and numerous other R's are saying the same thing, in private of course.

Stumpy won't adhere to this of course, since hardcore racists, chauvinists, homophobes and xenophobes adore him. From the get-go, Mango Mussolini has never once tried to appeal to anyone outside of the basest of his base (apparently no one told him that being President means leading all 50 states, not just the ones that support you), and those folks, while indeed loud, are a small minority and their numbers are gradually dwindling; this could prove to be his downfall since it's looking like 2020 may not be a repeat of 2016, for a number of reasons.

hobbyfan said...

Largely because President Pampers has played the same tired tunes since the Obama administration. Captain Cheetos would be well served to actually go to a church between now and November 3, and lock himself into a confessional......