‘Trump-hater’ vs. ‘Washington insider’: N.C. Republicans squabble over Senate seat

Backroom deal-making threatened to shake up North Carolina’s Republican Senate primary last week. Now, it’s given way to public brawling.

Negative attacks are ratcheting up in the fight for the open seat. A 12-page mailer landed in voters’ mailboxes this week calling former Gov. Pat McCrory “fatally flawed” and criticizing his ethics, while TV ads hammered him as a “Trump-hater, liberal faker” and attacked McCrory for endorsing Mitt Romney for president in 2012. They’re all paid for by the Club for Growth’s super PAC, part of a multimillion dollar effort to back Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who has received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the Senate race.

And McCrory, in his first interview since the ads started airing, went after the big-money group as Budd’s “bank,” intimating that Budd sold himself to the group “funding his entire political existence.”

“He’s standing on the backs of [a] Washington insiders’ group and endorsements with no record whatsoever,” McCrory said. “I don’t need to do that. I can stand on my record of accomplishments, kept promises as a mayor and as a governor. … My opponent’s vote may be for sale, but mine isn’t.”

The intensifying attacks come as the Republican field to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr appeared to narrow in recent days. On Saturday, former Rep. Mark Walker got Trump’s word he would endorse Walker to run in a newly drawn congressional district if he exited the Senate race, a shift that was expected to serve as a boost for Budd.

But on Thursday, after days had passed without an official endorsement announcement from Trump, Walker said he will remain in the Senate race for now, and he will continue to consider a House run through the end of the year. The Associated Press first reported Walker’s latest thinking.

Also, Walker can’t re-file for another office because the North Carolina Supreme Court has delayed the primary election.

https://www.wfdd.org/story/nc%E2%80%99s-top-court-halts-march-primary-due-remapping-suits

Politics is a nasty business. I wish many GOP candidates would save such vitriol for nonstop attack on the demonkkkraps. Comity within the party. GOPe loves to practice comity between parties but not within the party.
Comity between parties is asymmetric and between the two, Pat would probably live and work in the asymmetric comity club. His term as gubnar and how deficiently he ran his re-election campaign is there for all to see. Ted has to make himself better known across the state.

A fraction of the party faithful votes in the primaries. Most these already know for whom they would vote. There is plenty for Pat and Ted to share their views about. It will become obvious to the the minority of undecided primary voters to show up which one will be like Marsha Blackburn in Tennesee and which will be like the used-to-be-solid-conservative-now-demonkkkrap-assistant-Burr. (Burr’s hatred of Trump and failure to attack the demonkkkraps scorched earth after the Mueller witch hunt turned up zero is beyond disappointing - yehhhh, the DOJ compromised him for some interesting stock trades at the right moment in time.)

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