We Were Warned about Mark Robinson

By Dominic Pino

Friday, September 20, 2024

 

North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson is a terrible candidate who is likely to lose. This was confirmed by reporting yesterday about his bizarre online history, which Jim Geraghty covered in today’s Morning Jolt. But that’s only the latest of any number of warnings about Robinson that conservatives have had.

 

On September 6, Isaac Schorr wrote for the Washington Examiner:

 

Robinson, the lieutenant governor, is a dumpster fire of a candidate. . . . He’s made a mockery of himself by indulging Trump’s voter fraud victim fantasy. But the rest of his baggage almost renders that particular dishonor obsolete.

 

The baggage includes, among other things, “Holocaust denial, condemnation of the ‘shameless attention hogs’ (see also: women) who breastfeed their infants in public, mockery of Paul Pelosi after his brutal assault, and disparagement of Michelle Obama as a man and her husband as a ‘top-ranking demon.'”

 

In a dust-up from March where progressives took Robinson’s words out of context to attack him, Luther Ray Abel pointed out that there are plenty of words from Robinson that don’t require any modification that are awful and disqualifying:

 

Mark Robinson was already unfit for office. Robinson, who stumbled into modest political stardom in 2018 after a pro-2A speech of his before a city council gained traction online, has publicized many views that are the scrapings of an internet midden. From Rothschild conspiracies to Hitler quotations and all other manner of antisemitic intrigues, Robinson’s internet history is still public. The man has some talent for public speaking; he has a commanding voice and presence, but whatever powers he has as an orator are betrayed by an absence of prudence.

 

That’s probably why North Carolina’s senior senator, Republican Thom Tillis, endorsed one of Robinson’s primary opponents in December 2023. As Audrey Fahlberg reported at the time:

 

Robinson, now in his first term [as lieutenant governor], has come under fire in recent months for a history of controversial comments, including comparing gay people to “what the cows leave behind” and calling the Marvel Movie “Black Panther” a film created “by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist” to “pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.”

 

Tillis had worked to oust former Republican representative Madison Cawthorn from his House seat, in a successful effort to purge a different kook from the GOP, so he knew what he was talking about. On top of that, Tillis said his endorsement had more to do with the fact that Robinson had no political experience or demonstrated ability to get conservative policy wins.

 

Fahlberg, before joining National Review, had reported for the Dispatch in June 2023 about Robinson’s weakness as a candidate. “Many Republicans know Democrats have amassed an opposition research file that could be leaked at any time,” she wrote. “Even Robinson seems worried about more potentially damaging revelations.”

 

In April 2023, also for the Dispatch, Price St. Clair reported:

 

The same qualities that make Robinson electrifying to primary voters could come back to bite him in the general. He has often expressed his socially conservative views in inflammatory terms, decrying left-wing “blue-haired freaks,” describing homosexuality as “filth” and the rainbow pride flag as “a direct spit in the face of God Almighty,” mocking the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, and emphasizing that God called “David, not Davita” to take on Goliath.

 

In addition to the nutty/gross online stuff, Robinson also has financial issues. An investigation from WRAL  in 2022 found that he had failed to pay vehicle taxes in multiple years. “I’m not very good at math,” was his defense. A 2021 Greensboro News and Record story noted campaign-finance irregularities.

 

But Donald Trump endorsed him and called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” And at each step along the way, conservatives with reservations about Robinson were told they were stupid, ignorant, and behind the times.

 

“Mark Robinson is someone who comes across as an authentic person to working-class voters,” Jonathan Felts, a pro-Robinson consultant, told Fahlberg in the story about the Tillis endorsement. How demeaning a view of working-class voters does one have to have to believe that the type of man who called himself a Nazi on a public internet forum is relatable to them?

 

In Fahlberg’s Dispatch piece from 2023, Felts said, “My gut reaction is that the hesitancy about Robinson is significantly overblown. . . . It’s a small number of armchair quarterbacks who aren’t on the team. And they are desperately irrelevant.”

 

They don’t seem so irrelevant now.

 

As Noah Rothman wrote today, this mentality that the conservative base will only be happy with lunatic nominees who can’t win general elections is “a con job,” and Republicans need to stop falling for it.