NC Republicans are becoming the party of bigots, insurrectionists and the cowardly who let it happen

“This is not who we are.”

Six relatively simple words.

Why won’t North Carolina Republicans say them — or, better yet, act on them?

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s highest elected Republican, again made abhorrent remarks about LGBTQ+ people at a sermon in Winston-Salem on Nov. 14. In the sermon, which was posted to YouTube, Robinson said heterosexual couples are “superior” to gay couples and compared being gay to “what the cows leave behind” as well as maggots and flies.

This comes after Robinson, who is widely expected to run for governor in 2024, called “transgenderism” and homosexuality “filth” in a recently surfaced video from June — comments that the White House called “repugnant” and prompted some state Democrats to call for his resignation. Members of Robinson’s party, however, chose to excuse his comments, saying he was referring to books, not LGBTQ+ people themselves.

And just last week, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn praised a Wisconsin jury’s acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, a then-17-year-old white vigilante who shot three men, killing two, during a protest in Kenosha last year. Cawthorn offered Rittenhouse an internship and told his followers to “be armed, be dangerous and be moral” on Instagram Friday. Of course, that’s hardly surprising from Cawthorn, who reportedly helped plan the events of Jan. 6 and warned of “bloodshed” if our elections “continue to be stolen.”

What do North Carolina Republicans have to say about that? You can probably guess: nothing.

A lieutenant governor who spews hatred and a United States congressman who openly incites violence seems like the kind of thing reasonable people — or a political party — would want to distance themselves from. The same would seem to be true of state lawmakers who were reported to be members of a right-wing militant group, and the new N.C. House member who apparently attended the U.S. Capitol attack himself.

But rather than condemning such moral bankruptcy, North Carolina Republicans are letting it become their brand. They dutifully excuse — and even embrace — the behavior of insurrectionists and bigots, no matter how repugnant, and stand idly by as the ugliest voices in their party become the loudest. At best, that’s complicity; at worst, it’s concurrence.

That “party first, principles second” approach is a big reason why people like Cawthorn and Robinson have a platform at all. Republicans didn’t stop people on the fringes of their party from slipping into the mainstream over the years — and once they realized that it could win elections, they snuggled up even closer, abandoning everything they once stood for in the process.

Of course, there are Republicans who do criticize what their party has become. But they’re hard to find, and more often than not, they’re either leaving office or have already left it. By and large, those who want to remain in power choose to look away quietly; after all, those who break from the mold are often punished. Case in point: when North Carolina’s senior U.S. senator voted to impeach the now-former president for inciting an insurrection, his party back home voted unanimously to censure him.

That might explain why no Republican members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation voted to censure Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for posting an animated video that depicted him killing a Democratic congresswoman and assaulting President Joe Biden.

There’s hardly room for moral ambiguity when it comes to bigotry and violence: you either support it, or you don’t. It’s hard to say whether Republicans actually subscribe to their colleagues’ line of thinking, but it’s what they say and do publicly that matters — the quiet bystander shares at least some guilt with the bully.

This is the very public face of North Carolina Republicans. They are showing voters who they are. Now, as a state and as a country, we must decide who we want to be.