Did Rantin’ Robin spark an intra-party rebellion?
We are still feeling the aftershocks from NCGOP chairman Robin Hayes’s videotaped Tony Soprano-style shakedown of North Carolina delegates at the Tampa convention.
I’ve personally heard from numerous activists across the Tar Heel State expressing their frustration on- and off-the-record. People are demanding actions ranging from an immediate apology from Hayes, to a call for Hayes’s immediate resignation, to the firing of Hayes and all of his team at NCGOP HQ. This is not the kind of environment you want — as a party leader or candidate — heading into a general election.
One of our top NCGOP sources — who was in attendance at the Tampa convention — tells me she knows of “emergency meetings of several county executive committees in the state’s Piedmont region” to discuss a response to Hayes’s behavior in Tampa. (My source says discussions about these kinds of meetings are starting up east of I-95 as well.)
In 1948, convention wisdom said that President Harry Truman was highly unpopular and “dead meat” in the general election against Republican Tom Dewey. Somehow, the GOP establishment blew this slam-dunk of an opportunity, and Truman won re-election — -to the surprise of even The Chicago Tribune.
I swear it seems like the current-day GOP establishment is doing their darndest to recreate 1948.
The GOP establishment is causing particular heartburn by this stupid hardball power play in some of the states that are critical to Romney and/or to key Senate races. Do they have a death wish for the party? Why create bitterness in the party at the very time you need everyone pulling together in a key election?
Hayes is a pathetic beltway establishment yes-man, and needs to be gone, the sooner the better. And his little dog, Wayne King, too.