Republicans keep reminding us what Mark Robinson wants you to forget: he’s toxic | Opinion
JD Vance doesn’t want anything to do with Mark Robinson. North Carolina voters shouldn’t, either.
The Republican Vice-Presidential nominee came all the way to North Carolina to tell people just how disgusted he is with the GOP gubernatorial nominee. Well, sort of.
“You guys have a great lieutenant governor. Sorry. Mark isn’t here. We’ve got Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg,” Vance said during a recent rally.
It was the most Freudian of slips. It’s custom for state-level politicians to be given prominent appearances at presidential rallies. Robinson got something worse, an accidental reminder he’s so toxic he isn’t even worthy of a cameo for a presidential ticket that sells toxicity by the barrel.
Robinson isn’t qualified to attend a high-profile rally of fellow Republicans. Why would anyone think he’s qualified to be governor?
He’s too toxic for Vance, who has shown so much disdain for single women he’s been known to refer to them as deranged, childless cat ladies. Vance also spent weeks spreading bigoted rumors about Haitian immigrants in Ohio supposedly eating their neighbors pets, lies that led to death threats against innocent people and a temporarily shuttered city hall.
Robinson is too toxic for the Republican Governors Association, which stopped advertising for the lieutenant general . . . sorry, I mean the lieutenant governor who said he wanted to buy a few slaves, according to a damaging CNN report. Robinson said the claims in the report are false and has filed a lawsuit, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s for show. There’s a good chance it will fade away after the election.
Donald Trump, the man who rose to political prominence by spreading the bigoted birtherism conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama, paid a porn star to be quiet about an affair, and was found liable for sexual abuse, wants nothing to do with Robinson. He wasn’t considered fit enough to join a Trump gathering in Madison Square Garden this past weekend that turned into a near-Klan rally. It featured a “comedian” lobbing racist “jokes” about Latinos and Black people to a crowd that loved it. Hulk Hogan, a wrestling legend with an ugly history of using the n-word, was also featured. You’d think a “Black Nazi” like Robinson would have fit right in. And yet, he was too toxic even for that.
Robinson likely doesn’t want you to remember any of that the closer we get to election day, or his past antisemitic comments or his crude remarks about women considering abortion – despite he and his wife having availed themselves of abortion services. They made a choice Robinson doesn’t want the women of North Carolina to be able to make – he wants to make it for them.
Despite being so toxic his own party wanted to dump him after the CNN investigation, Robinson has been campaigning in friendly venues in the state wanting to come across as just another Republican who will bring us all together like the good Christian he says he is. He even momentarily agreed to an interview with The New York Times but backed out once it became clear he wouldn’t be allowed to launder his reputation.
He wants North Carolina voters to believe he’s just a dedicated father, a loyal husband, someone who made it out of poverty, a man of faith who simply loves and wants the best for his state.
With less than a week until Election Day, Robinson’s best bet is for voters to forget who he has long been. He rose to political prominence by being bombastic and in-your-face. He wants to rise higher by pretending to be the opposite, pretending to be something he’ll never be.
He wants you to see him shaking hands and kissing babies, and push to the back of your mind, if not out of it altogether, his extremism.
Don’t let him fool you. There’s too much at stake to let him get away with that.