June 12, 2023 02:39 PM UTC

Eating Your Own: Not Just For Dave Williams Anymore!

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Will Doran reports for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina, the recent phenomenon of state Republican Party organizations dominated by far-right hardcore activists openly attacking Republican elected officials, which we’ve seen in Colorado as state GOP chairman Dave Williams attacks his 2022 congressional primary opponent Rep. Doug Lamborn at every opportunity, isn’t limited to our state where an already decimated GOP minority limits the harm:

Conservative delegates to the annual North Carolina Republican Party convention voted Saturday to censure the state’s senior U.S. senator, a member of their own party, for votes that delegates said went against the party’s views on key issues.

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who has served in Congress since 2015, has attempted in recent years to work on bipartisan deals in Congress on hot-button issues — particularly guns, immigration and gay marriage — which have left some conservatives feeling dissatisfied with his record. The official resolution against Tillis is vague, saying he is being censured for “blatant violations of our party platform.”

A Tillis spokesman said Saturday after the vote that the senator “keeps his promises and delivers results,” and former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory also jumped to Tillis’ defense, tweeting that he hoped all the state’s elected officials would stand behind the senator.

But that wasn’t happening Saturday at the convention…

We’ll start with the obvious: Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is not by any stretch of the imagination a leftist. From the beginning of Tillis’ career in the North Carolina state legislature, Tillis campaigned on the standard spread of social wedge issues from a constitutional ban on gay marriage to abortion, not to mention being a Southern state Senator making sure voting rights don’t get too permissive.

On the Respect for Marriage Act that Tillis is coming under friendly fire over, Tillis defends the bill as a compromise that would allow North Carolina to reimpose a ban on same-sex marriage if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Obergefell decision federalizing marriage equality. It’s not an answer that will satisfy every social conservative, but it’s not a wholesale surrender of principles that would merit a censure by Tillis’ own party.

“He knows how to legislate, he knows how to get conservative results, and he knows how to beat Democrats when they pour all the money and resources in the world against him,” [former NC GOP vice chair Wayne] King said. “This sends a terrible message to independents that the NCGOP is no longer a big tent party … and if it continues, North Carolina will become a blue state.”

North Carolina is a long way from the battle-tested blue stronghold we take for granted in Colorado, but the state is viewed as increasingly competitive and subject to a great deal of infrastructural investment by Democrats eyeing long-term political dominance driven by urbanization and demographic evolution–some of the same dynamics that helped remake Colorado politically over the past two decades.

If the North Carolina GOP wants to help out by decapitating its leadership, that should speed things up.