The Brawley Censure: A parting shot from Speaker Thom
State House Republican leaders tried hard to spin the censure of one of their colleagues yesterday as anything but a vendetta executed at the order of Speaker Thom Tillis. We spoke with three sources — intimately familiar with the inner workings of the House Republican caucus — who tell us the move against Robert Brawley was definitely orchestrated by Tillis. Said one of these sources:
“This was a 100 percent corner office production. Oh, [state Rep.and Tillis henchman] Leo [Daughtry] and [Majority Leader] Edgar [Starnes] were out front on this thing, but they were carrying out orders handed down from the Speaker’s office. That was crystal clear to everyone.”
All three of my sources concurred on that version of events. I asked why the caucus would bother to do this — given the fact that Brawley will be leaving office in a few months. One of the other sources told me:
“This was supposed to go down right before the May primary, in order to provide the most negative publicity and embarrassment for Brawley as possible. They had a hard time getting enough people together before the primary to get this done. A lot of people felt really uncomfortable getting involved in this never-ending pissing match between Brawley and the Speaker.”
Robert Brawley lost his renomination bid on May 6 by about 100 votes — to a Tillis ally and campaign contributor. The Tillis-Brawley feud went public late last year when Brawley was stripped of his Finance Committee chairmanship. Brawley submitted a letter to Tillis leveling accusations of the speaker abusing his power for the benefit of campaign contributors. Tillis made Brawley read the letter aloud to the House — thereby making things public. One of my sources pointed out:
”All of this turmoil and drama is Tillis’ fault. He could have handled the initial episode much differently. He and the caucus would not have had even half of this drama. This thin-skinnedness and vindictiveness — it’s shades of Richard Morgan, or even Richard Nixon.”
This is the final shot (probably) in Tillis’ war on conservative legislators. In 2012, he used gerrymandering to destroy the districts of conservative representatives Glen Bradley and Bill Cook by slicing up their home counties. Both ran for the Senate, but had to confront Raleigh-recruited primary challengers. In Bradley’s case, it was a legislative staffer for a member of the House leadership who filed against him in the Senate race. With Cook, it was someone who had run the previous election for county commission as a Democrat but had conveniently switched to Republican. Cook made it to the Senate, no thanks to the Tillis mafia, but Bradley did not.
For the 2014 election, Tillis recruited the Mecklenburg GOP vice chairman to move to conservative Rep. Larry Pittman’s district to primary him, but that bombed, so he recruited a liberal woman who had tried to mount an independent challenge against Governor McCrory. Pittman won by a 2 to 1 margin. Tillis did recruit a progressive Republican to challenge Brawley and narrowly beat him. Tillis’ mafia made calls to try to recruit challengers to other conservative legislators including Rep. Mike Speciale, but were unable to find any other pigeons.
Do you have a list of those shameful hacks who voted against Brawley? Even a partial list would be helpful. Or a list of the courageous 11 (whose bills are probably now dead for this session)?.
We do not need malicious anti-conservatives thugs in the US Senate whether their name happens to be Kay Hagan or whether it happens to be Thom Tillis. There is not a dimes worth of difference between those vipers.
Thom Tillis is not afraid to stand on principle!
North Carolina needs a fighter like Thom Tillis. The voters had a chance to vote for Thom Tillis and Robert Brawley and their decision has been recorded. Brawley lost the confidence of the voters while the voters cast a balance of confidence for Thom Tillis.
In terms of a vote of confidence, I remind you that primary voters gave Robert Brawley a higher percentage of their vote that they gave Thom Tillis. If that is a vote of confidence, then voters have more confidence in Brawley than in Tillis.
Thom Tillis only principles are power, opportunism, and prostituting for the special interests. He would not recognize a real political principle if one jumped up and bit him. Tillis is a fighter AGAINST conservative principles and conservative politicians. We do NOT need that in a US Senator.
If he fights conservatives like Bradley, Brawley, Pittman, and others in the NC House, he will be fighting against Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Jeff Sessions, and similar conservatives in the US Senate. That is exactly what Kay Hagan would be doing. Thom TIllis is just Kay Hagan without the skirt.
Tillis has had a chance in the short session to unify the party and instead is splitting it apart. He richly deserves the defeat that will bring him. Good riddance! Sadly, he has stuck us with 6 more years of Hagan.
The number of people who support or “vote” for a candidate or position is entirely immaterial to whether that candidate or position is a good one or not.
(Lots of people eat at McDonalds… doesnt make it high-quality food – and election results dont make Tillis any less of an embarrassingly thin-skinned, tantrum-throwing child, ).
Can you hear yourself? Surely you don’t think anyone with two brain cells to rub together takes that kind of mindless, rah-rah sucking up seriously.
Of course, there are quite a number of people that both vote and who fall well outside that category 🙂
Thom Tillis has lost my vote. Robert Brawley has been censured because he stood up for what was right and he fought back against the corruption and cronyism of Thom Tillis and people like Justin Burr. Brawley has paid a price for this, but when someone stands up for what is right they will be rewarded in the end.
Let’s censure Thommy Thillis in November. His defeat will be a “gut punch” to the the tyrant.
I’m all in. Let’s see who gets the last parting shot.
so by extension you must REALLY like Harry Reid?!?!?! No way will I EVER do anything to support the destruction of the Constitution
Harry Reid is really awful, but Mitch ”Kentucky Kickback” McConnell is not that much of an improvement. After all, it was McConnell, not Reid, who vowed of conservatives to ”crush them everywhere”. Neither Reid nor McConnell would be good news for conservatives. I miss McConnell had been unhorsed in the Kentucky primary.
I will NOT support Tillis for any elective office, even dogcatcher (if that is an elective office). The RINO duo of Burr and Tillis would send me over the edge. May as well just vote Hagen back in…there is never any doubt on her votes (like it or not). The money always speaks and assurredly Hagen’s group has deeper pockets than the NCGOP although the NCGOP welcomed outside funds for the primary.
Save the Republican Party by Voting for Hagan. Rebublicans for Hagan! Rebublicans for Hagan!!!Republicans for Hagan!!!! You could do worse.
HOW???????
Darlene, you do not have to support Tillis financially. If elected he will aggravate us conservatives but he will vote with us more often than not. Hagen will vote with us 0% of the time. And he would not vote for Dingy Harry as speaker. Hold your nose and vote for Tillis, please do not stay home.
Would you vote for a Lindsay Graham for the same reason?
These undocumented Democrats hurt our brand.
If Tillis votes for amnesty, as would be likely, that would do more damage to the NCGOP than having Hagan up there doing it. If we are going to have a Senator who votes like a Democrat, it is better that they be a bona fide Democrat.
The ball is in Tillis’ court to show us that he will be strong on Republican issues, and he does need to show it as his words do not seem to mean much. Allowing the vote on repealing Common Core is a step in the right direction, but that alone is probably not enough, given that he also made a step backward with his witchhunt against a legislator on his personal enemies list, Robert Brawley. Putting through a repeal of the Renewable Energy Mandate would be another appropriate area to prove himself to conservatives, and he really needs to do something real on amnesty.