‘He has to shrink away from greatness’ : The NY Times on Thom Tillis’s ‘poignant surrender’
‘Greatness,’ eh?
The New York Times slobbering lovingly over a Republican sets off my alarm bells and should do the same for every other conservative out there.
Apparently, to The Times newsroom, President Trump and all of the mean right-wing Republicans in North Carolina are keeping our senior senator from achieving real ‘greatness’:
Few Republican senators give a better floor speech than Thom Tillis of North Carolina does. He’s the Daniel Day-Lewis of moral outrage. He delivered a doozy last month, challenging President Trump’s revisionist history of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calling Vladimir Putin “a liar, a murderer” and “the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”
But Tulsi Gabbard is apparently no threat at all. Although she has been something of a Putin apologist, Tillis fell in line with 51 of his Republican colleagues in the Senate and voted to confirm her as director of national intelligence. Afterward, on Facebook, he proclaimed his pride in supporting her. […]
I think these people are actually serious.
Apparently, Trump is making it really hard for Thom Tillis to be *principled*:
[…] Courage, capitulation — Tillis pinballs dizzyingly between the two. As he gears up for a 2026 campaign for a third term in the Senate, he seems to be at war with himself. And perhaps more poignantly than any other Republican on Capitol Hill, Tillis, 64, illustrates how hard it is to be principled, independent or any of those other bygone adjectives in Trump’s Republican Party. That’s a compliment. For most Republicans in Congress, there’s no battle between conscience and supplication. They dropped to their knees years ago. There’s no tension between what they say and what they do. They praise Trump with their every word, including the conjunctions.
Tillis was supposed to be different, a possible pox on Trump’s most outrageous nominees for key administration positions. But he has voted for them all — the good, the bad, the unfathomable, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Maybe he really thinks that’s the right thing to do. Maybe he’s just at Trump’s mercy. Trump angers quickly, has a thirst for vengeance and has made clear that he can punish Republicans who cross him by backing opponents in their primaries. For Tillis, who already has a tense relationship with North Carolina’s increasingly right-wing Republicans, that might be disastrous. […]
*Increasingly right-wing Republicans in North Carolina*? We had the most conservative US senator in the country from 1973 to 2003. From 1993 to 1999, we had the TWO most conservative members of the US Senate.
We have quite a history of conservative representation in the US Senate. As you’d expect, we’re ticked when someone campaigns as a conservative but runs to the left when he gets to DC.
Forgive us for insisting that our Republican senators do what they tell us they’ll do. Forgive us for expecting them to honor the party platform.
Democrats are amazingly effective at enforcing party loyalty. They make it clear to their people they will suffer if they fall out of line. How often do you see Democrats crossing the line to vote with Republicans?
Meanwhile, our people fund Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis. Susan Collins gets to chair the Senate Appropriations Committee.
And, *principled* ???
The most recent conservative ratings — from the last two years — show Tillis amassing a voting record to the left of Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders.
Voting for the party’s agenda is absolutely optional, apparently. (Perhaps The Times is referring to Thom’s loyalty to Bernie’s list of *principles.*)
Tillis survived the 2014 GOP primary for US Senate thanks to a split conservative voting bloc. He barely survived the general election against a walking-dead Democrat incumbent and a pizza delivery guy.
In the 2020 race, Tillis barely got by a relative unknown former state legislator who got blind-sided with an adultery scandal at the last-minute.
Tillis hasn’t seen 50 percent in a general election since he left the General Assembly. His team has to beg people kind of like THIS: “Don’t you think Thom is better than having a Democrat?”
The answer, actually, is not really. His voting record to the left of an avowed socialist is not better than having a Democrat senator.
If Thom Tillis gets by the primary in 2026, he stands a really good chance of being knocked off in the general by former Governor Roy Cooper.
Cooper is a significantly stronger prospect than the late Kay Hagan or Cal Cunningham. Remember, Tillis squeaked by those two.
Holding your nose and voting for Tillis in the primary will likely give you six more years of ol’ Roy. (The one that has never coached basketball.)
Ads running in eastern NC touting HIS superfluous “record” on Sr Citizens, Social Security and fightting against CUTS (what cuts)?? It’s as if Tillis has been the HERO of seniors & Social Security.
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Here is another outrage from the Beltway Bozo GOP Senate leadership. In Texas, stalwart conservative state Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a primary challenge to a liberal Republican incumbent at least as bad as Tillis, John Cornyn. Cornyn’s liberal record on a wide variety of issues from immigration to gun control to government spending got him loudly booed the last time he showed his face at a state Republican convention. A poll a week before Paxton’s announcement showed him beating Cornyn by over 20 points. So what does National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina do? He publicly endorses Cornyn in the primary! NRSC should stand for Nutty RINO Senatorial Committee. No conservative should ever give them a dime. Follow the guidance of the Senate Conservatives Fund instead to put your money behind the right candidates. http://www.senateconservatives.com
Another key Senate primary that is shaping up is against uber-RINO Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who has dumped on conservatives on a wide range of issues and even voted to impeach President Trump on the second impeachment. He is being challenged by staunch conservative State Treasurer John Fleming, who is also a former congressman and co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus.
We need a top tier candidate like Paxton or Fleming against Terrible Thom Tillis.
Thommy’s “base” is now down to Mrs Tillis and Paul Shumaker. And Mrs Tillis is “iffy”.
Alas, finding a primary opponent to challenge/defeat Thommy who has name recognition AND $$$$ will likely be beyond the very limited capability of the NCGOP … sigh.
The remnants of the Old Republican Party Establishment are simply hanging on for dear life and don’t realize it’s time to just die. The political maneuverings of Thom Tillis simply make no sense in the world of today’s NC politics. Every Republican I know is befuddled by this man. Why won’t he just retire and become a beltway lobbyist and let us nominate a true conservative for this critical senate race?
The Lori Buckhout race should show the Democrats have a strategy that is certain to take Tillis down if he is the nominee. In Buckhout’s case, the Democrats set up an outside group to hit GOP voters with a message that she was a “RINO” which she really wasn’t and urged them to vote Libertarian. That shifted enough votes to the Libertarians, that far left Democrat Don Davis survived.
With Tillis, the Democrats don’t even have to make things up. His record is what in the military they call a “target rich environment” for such a campaign. A very side range of conservative and Republican voters are already very outrageous by Tillis’ antics. Many who last time held their nose to vote for him at the last minute so he narrowly squeaked through, felt betrayed and stabbed in the back when Tillis immediately went on a liberal spree once he got back to DC. Tillis is on very thin ice with a large swath of GOP voters.
If TIllis is the nominee, you will see Democrat-financed groups targeting conservatives with Tillis’ miserable record urging them to vote Libertarian or Constitution Party or whatever and TIllis will go down in flames. He is road kill for that type of campaign. Any competent Republican strategist ought to comprehend that.
If we are not to see a Senator Roy Cooper, which would be a huge disaster, then we need a different candidate than the unelectable Thom Tillis. Maybe Trump can appoint him an ambassador somewhere to get him out of the way.