The Republican Party under Donald Trump has habitually elevated extreme right-wing candidates who can’t find enough support outside of hardcore partisans to win elections. But Mark Robinson, who won the GOP nomination for governor of North Carolina Tuesday night, is a special case even by the modern GOP’s standards.
Robinson, North Carolina’s current lieutenant governor, has hurled hateful remarks at everyone from Michelle Obama to the survivors of the Parkland school shooting. He’s called the LGBTQ community “filth.” He threatened to use his AR-15 against the government if it “gets too big for its britches,” and he wants to outlaw all abortions as well as return to a time when women couldn’t vote. He’s also ridiculed the Me Too movement, women generally, and climate change.
It seems Robinson is willing to entertain all manner of conspiracy theories, too. He’s a Holocaust denier and has a history of antisemitic remarks. He’s suggested that the 1969 moon landing might have been fake, that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that the music industry is run by Satan, and that billionaire Democratic donor George Soros orchestrated the Boko Haram kidnappings of school girls in 2014.
But in spite of all of this, Robinson has not only been able to win his party’s nomination for the state’s most powerful position, but he did so by a margin of more than 45 percent over his rivals. The other Republican candidates, trial lawyer Bill Graham and state treasurer Dale Folwell, raised concerns about Robinson’s electability, but ultimately neither could compete with his name recognition nor his MAGA bona fides in a state that twice voted for Trump. Even the endorsement of US Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who has at times distanced himself from Trump, didn’t move the needle for Graham in his race against Robinson.
Robinson’s nomination suggests that GOP primary voters have no interest in kowtowing to electability concerns in a battleground state…
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