NC Republicans helped create extremists like Cawthorn. Now it’s who they are.

A growing number of Republicans seem to be coming around to an idea that’s old news: people like Madison Cawthorn maybe shouldn’t hold public office.

Cawthorn, only a first-term congressman, frequently makes national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s top-ranking Republican, hasn’t shied away from divisive rhetoric of his own. In so many respects, they define what the North Carolina Republican Party has become: a party of extremism. A party that, despite everything, has stood by former President Donald Trump.

And apparently, some within their party are unhappy with that branding — at least behind the scenes.

“Cawthorn is not well-regarded with Republicans statewide in North Carolina. Many of us think he is an embarrassment to our party and state,” a GOP strategist, speaking anonymously, told the conservative Washington Examiner.

But it might be too late to reclaim the moral high ground.

The despicable rhetoric coming from certain Republican politicians is hardly a new phenomenon. It didn’t come as a surprise, either — Cawthorn and Robinson campaigned on the same toxic messaging they’re spouting now. And for far too long, it was enabled by the Republican establishment, the vast majority of whom said and did very little to stop it.

They were silent when people like Cawthorn peddled election fraud conspiracies. They were silent when he warned of “bloodshed” if elections continue to be “rigged.” And when Robinson repeatedly disparaged the LGBTQ+ community? Yep, you guessed it — nothing.

Even the events of Jan. 6, in which a wave of Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol to overturn an election they were told was “stolen,” didn’t prove to be much of a wake-up call for many Republican politicians.

Cawthorn and Robinson may have positioned themselves as future leaders of the Republican Party, but it was hardly a hostile takeover. The party gave their most radical members the tools to dismantle democracy. They gave them a platform, helped fund their campaigns and looked the other way when they strayed into vitriolic territory.

They let people like Cawthorn and Robinson become the face of the Republican Party. But that brand of politics is becoming less of an asset and more of a liability. And now that Republicans realize it may not bode well for them politically, some want to take it back. Many others continue to, at least implicitly, support them.

Cawthorn’s labeling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “thug,” for example, has elicited pushback from his fellow Republicans.

“When you see a member of Congress say things like this, the one thing I want you to know, they are outliers in the largest sense possible on our side,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said at a press conference.

But aside from his position on Ukraine, Cawthorn is hardly an outlier. There are plenty of Cawthorns in Congress right now, and even more of them are seeking public office in 2022. So far, none of them has been shunned by their party. Even speaking at a conference organized by white nationalists didn’t yield any real consequences for U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In fact, the only people who have been exiled — or at least formally reprimanded — are those who challenge the Trumpified status quo. When Sen. Richard Burr cast a “guilty” vote in Trump’s second impeachment trial, the North Carolina Republican Party voted unanimously to censure him. U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have faced an onslaught of criticism from their fellow Republicans for their involvement in the House’s January 6 committee.

That’s why Cawthorn and his ilk, abhorrent as they may be, are not exactly the problem. They’re a symptom of a greater one. Because this is what happens when you spend half a decade allying yourself with the former president and allow his poisonous, incendiary trademark to go unchecked.

It may be that many Republicans have always had reservations about the Cawthorns and the Robinsons of their party, at least in private. But as an elected official, what matters most is what you do in public — and it took way too long for Republicans in power to even say something.

So when Republicans try to paint themselves as rational and morally grounded actors — the very antithesis of people like Cawthorn — North Carolinians should remember all the times that they weren’t.

This story was originally published March 20, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "NC Republicans helped create extremists like Cawthorn. Now it’s who they are.."