It’s raining EXCUSES (ALL Trump’s fault. All of it.)

There’s a comic strip out there called ‘The Family Circus.’  The strip’s cartoonist bases a lot of it on his and his wife’s experience raising young children.  A popular bit featured in the strip is an invisible gremlin named *NOT ME* who gets blamed for trouble whenever it happens around the cartoonist’s house.  (*”Who broke this vase?”  “Not me, daddy.” “Who ate all the ice cream?” “Not me.” Who left these muddy footprints all over the carpet?” “Not me.”*)

It seems the gremlin known as NOT ME is making a cameo appearance in North Carolina Republican politics.

The handle-bar mustachioed one™ went on Tim Boyum‘s patty-cake podcast on Spectrum late in the campaign to declare Roy Cooper is just unbeatable.  The Mustache was collecting one of his many consulting checks from Mike Whatley at the time.

Paul Shumaker – longtime adviser to Thom Tillis who also oversaw Tim Moore‘s loss this year — went on UNC-TV to declare that not even Thom himself could have won this Senate race this year.  Roy was just too tough.

Thom – Shumaker said – would have had to drastically separate himself from Trump to make a win happen.  And that would have hurt the whole party, he explained.

*Surely, Tillis quitting the Senate had nooooooooothinnnnng to do with the polling showing him losing by at least NINE to Cooper and anyone else who might file.*

And Tillis worried about hurting the party ????  Is that what he’s been doing in all those rapid-fire CNN and MSNBC appearances – *helping* the party ????*

*Unbeatable.* Hmmmm.  That’s what they said about Jim Hunt at one time.  And then Governor Pompadour slammed head-first into a brick wall named Jesse Helms.  Everybody is beatable. Everybody.  

Let’s see.  Whatley lost by nearly 20 points.   Pat McCrory lost by one percent to Cooper in 2016.  Dan Forest – who quit halfway through the  2020 campaign – lost to Cooper by 4.5 percent.  How did those two do so much better against Cooper than Whatley did?  Trump was on the ballot both of those times. 

If Cooper is unbeatable, then why bother having an opposition party and running elections?  Why don’t we all just GO HOME?

It got even worse this past weekend in Raleigh. Embattled NCGOP chairman Jason Simmons is making it clear he wants two more years at the party’s helm – despite presiding over an election that has set the party back 50 years.  Simmons and his underlings made it clear to assembled activists and leaders that things would have gone so much better had Trump just behaved himself and stayed away.  *Never mind the absence of any aid to our judicial candidates, no state-level GOTV operation, and absolutely no semblance of any rapid-response style communications operation.*

Jason & co. got absolutely smoked by that little girl over at Dem HQ in Raleigh.  Smoked. *And they want two more years.*