More Tales of Candidate Selection
Mark Robinson is the latest example.
![](https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/image-5-1024x577.png)
So, yesterday CNN’s KFile dropped the following: ‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum. The piece starts thusly:
Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, a CNN KFile investigation found.
Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a “perv.”
You know, the kinds of things that a party loves to read the day that the deadline for the being on the ballot hits and on the cusp of early-voting ballots going out in the mail.
Politico added: Email address belonging to Mark Robinson found on Ashley Madison.
Now, it isn’t as if Robinson was thought to be a high quality individual who is just being exposed at the eleventh hour. Rather he was already known to be a highly problematic candidate who was likely to lose the governor’s race, but this just ramps up the weird to an off-the-charts kind of level. I noted, in passing, the following story back in March Via HuffPo: Mark Robinson: ‘I Absolutely Want To Go Back To The America Where Women Couldn’t Vote’.
The North Carolina Republican’s longing for the days when women couldn’t vote ties into his history of demeaning women and mocking feminism, especially on social media. He’s claimed that feminism was created by Satan. He’s said that men who identify as feminists are “about as MANLY as a pair of lace panties” and are “weak mined, jelly backed ‘men.’”He’s routinely referred to feminists as “fem-nazis” and, in one particularly colorful post, described those who support equal rights for women as “sexist, hairy armpit having, poo-poo hat wearing pinkos.”
“The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place, is a man who doesn’t know his,” he wrote on Facebook in December 2017.
Channeling the late televangelist Pat Robertson, he has claimed that Satan himself is using “lesbianism and feminism” to destroy traditional families.
And that was just one story.
Robinson in the sitting Lt. Governor of North Carolina, so it is not shocking that he won the nomination for governor. I am insufficiently versed in NC politics to know how he managed to rise to that level. Still, I can’t help but note that this is an excellent example of how the institutional weakness of US political parties and its porous candidate selection process hampers parties from developing in a way that Is in the public interest. North Carolina is either a light red of purple state where a solid Republican should be competitive for the governorship.
Robinson is also an example of Trump’s poor political instincts. All that matters to Trump is how much other politicians kowtow to him. As a result, Trump has said things like this:
Not surprisingly, NBC is reporting Democrats launch new ad push to tie Trump to Mark Robinson following reported porn website comments and CNN that Harris campaign highlights Trump’s past praise for Mark Robinson as CNN report roils battleground North Carolina.
North Carolina is effectively tied in the polls between Trump and Harris. Trumps is up 0.1% in FiveThirtyEight‘s poll average in the state. Nate Silver has the same number.
If Robinson’s woes lead to simply depressing the Republican vote in NC, that could be enough to move the state to Harris. At a bare minimum, this is bad news for the Republican Party and the Trump campaign. And it again illustrated how our candidate selection process can produce truly awful candidates.
Reposting my limerick from the open forum:
There once was a pervy black Nazi
Who thought Jews destroyed Francis Scott Key
His fiery sermons
Sound better in German
It sure beats the four in Benghazi
I’m going to guess that the racist GOP needed a Black face in a desperate reach for at least a few Black votes, and to counter the (correct) sense that the GOP is KKK-adjacent. A Black Nazi? Exactly what they wanted. Just maybe not a Black Nazi into trans porn.
CNN breaks a decade old story the day of the ballot deadline.
I think these kinds of problems are endemic to the evangelical culture. There is a rot and sickness there that has metastasized into the far right politics of Christian Nationalism. And Trumpism.
Here is a recent article from North Texas:
Thousands of DFW churchgoers affected by string of resignations, scandals
@Fortune:
The speculation is that this was a last-minute push/oppo dump by folks in the Republican Party who were hoping Robinson would step down for the good of the ticket.
So much for that.
Repeating this. So far Trump’s political instincts have brought repeated ruin to the infrastructure of the Republican party at both the State and National Level. Thanks to him, they have lost Senate seats and Governorships they should have won in multiple swing states.
However, the sunk cost of ego invested in Trump is far too deep for any of his supporters to admit this disastrous aspect of his time as the Party’s leader.
@Scott:
In the early 80’s I was a business manager for a group of psychologists, a couple of which, were also ordained ministers. Their referral base frequently were from churches, often it was the ministers that were the referrals, quite often for sexual peccadillos that were considered deviant. That so many incidents popped up in a limited geographic area in a short time span, a statistical curiosity, is what’s interesting, not the behaviors that are being confessed too.
The MAGAs seem to be nearly unanimous in agreeing that this Robinson business is fake news.
@Fortune:
The story isn’t a decade old. The events transpired a decade ago. There’s a difference, genius.
Also, as Matt B. said, this is Robinson’s fellow Republicans trying to push him off the ticket. Democrats want him to stay exactly where he is.
@Mikey: “You know, the kinds of things that a party loves to read the day that the deadline for the being on the ballot hits and on the cusp of early-voting ballots going out in the mail.”
Either the article is wrong or the timing only benefits the Democrats.
@Fortune: Replacing Robinson with an actually viable candidate would absolutely not benefit the Democrats.
Unfortunately for the NC GOP, Robinson is far too Trump-y to put his party’s welfare above his own ego, so he won’t be going anywhere, despite his party’s last-ditch effort in pushing this story.
@Fortune: “CNN breaks a decade old story the day of the ballot deadline.”
And your point is?
@Fortune: Of course, if the goal was to help the Democrats, waiting a bit longer would have been the smarter play.
I won’t pretend to know the motivations of who provided the information (and we really don’t know what the reporting timeline looks like). I will note that the contents of the story are the contents, regardless of when they were revealed and whether there were political motives or not.
If the story is true, and the reporting looks solid, then it is what it is.
What I find truly disqualifying about this isn’t the behavior, not that I’m a fan of it. It’s the complete lack of opsec/shame, and the fact that he (apparently) thought Ashley Madison was somehow legitimate in any way. It’s slightly possible this is all a 15-year-old smear, but that seems unlikely.
@Fortune: did the FSB not teach you about sarcasm?
@Fortune:
In what way? Seriously, I would love you to explain why you think this.
To @Steven L. Taylor‘s point, holding this until later would be more of a benefit in terms of discouraging turnout.
In terms of polls, Robinson has consistently been at least 8 points underwater (see https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/governor/2024/north-carolina/). Replacing him with a more moderate candidate would have been far more helpful for Republicans than Democrats.
I know this is a well established premise for you, Steven, and one I accept to be basically true. But I think it would be worth exploring whether “political parties” (in the plural) is an accurate read of the US system, at least in 2024. Because this institutional weakness is not reflected symmetrically in the candidates being selected by the respective parties.
The GOP is represented by not only Robinson and, of course, Trump. They have prominent leaders (read as spokespeople rather than legislators) that include MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, RoJo, Tuberville, and (coming on strong) JD Vance. I’m not naming people with radical political views, but people of questionable character and/or intelligence. Who among Democrats can we name who would belong in the category? Bob Menendez was the only one I could come up with without Google research.
This strikes me as important data if we are interested in strengthening our political institutions. What are the Democrats doing differently to mitigate their porous candidate selection process? How are the Democrats policing their candidates once they are candidates or once they get elected? How are Republican establishment types influencing their constituents and vice versa?
@Matt Bernius:
Also, so what if actions by Republicans to knock their guy off the ballot also benefits Democrats (admittedly parroting what several other have already said in this post).
It is funny how often it seemed to be someone from the GOP party who would remind folks that politics ain’t beanbag, especially when the GOP could see how many people in the Democratic party were lamenting that our candidate did not have a snowballs chance on a hot day in California to win the election (to become Governor, a Senator, House Rep, etc.), but now I never seem to hear anyone saying that.
Honestly, I am surprised that this saying has not come back into vogue. Maybe instead of Democrats saying to the GOP to remember that politics ain’t beanbag, they are now saying many of your candidates are weird (or just vile individuals), which seems to be working out just as well or better for the Democratic party.
@Scott F.:
These GOP candidates aren’t an accident, or outliers, they are representative of the GOP population. Ditto Democrats. Republicans have asshole candidates because Republicans are assholes.
I look forward to Professor Taylor’s next paper, to be titled, Turns Out They’re All Just Assholes. Subtitled, The Grand Unified Asshole Theory of Republican Politics.
@Michael Reynolds:
Unavoidable video reference: keep firing, Assholes!
@Kathy:
Perfect.
I agree, Kevin, it seems unlikely since Robinson was not even a politician when these things were posted. It’s only slightly more likely than Obama getting his birth notice printed in the Honolulu newspaper to substantiate his U.S. birth.
@Michael Reynolds:
The Democrats have assholes in their population. The party is just much better at not catering to their asshole voters and pushing their asshole candidates to the fringe.
I was reflecting on a key moment in the 2008 election when McCain stood up for Obama’s character by correcting a constituent who didn’t trust Obama because she thought he was an Arab. McCain got a lot of public praise for that moment. Of course, McCain then lost that election. I think this was an inflection point for the Republican zeitgeist. The Republicans chose not to moderate (as was more traditional for a losing party) and instead chose to elevate their assholery.
I use “zeitgeist” here because I agree with Pr Taylor’s central premise that party establishments are weak. But, again, the Democrats have managed to avoid giving the keys of the asylum over to the inmates, while the Republicans are leaning in to the crazy and weird. What do “otherwise decent” Republicans or ex-Republicans like our hosts think happened?
@Fortune:
Democrats would have benefited from the story coming out in a week or so, after ballots had been mailed out–not a day before. This feels to me like a last-ditch effort on the part of GOP party types who are concerned that this will produce a drag on the top of the ticket, which is deeply ironic considering they are apparently trying to save Trump, who is a loud and proud supporter of this truly terrible candidate.
The reason we call them “October surprises” is that they usually come in October, when it’s too late to change anything.
@Scott F.:
I do not think the problem is porous selection process, I think instead the party’s core ideology self-selects the pool of people seeking to be Republican candidates. So the pool of would-be Republican pols is tilted towards unprincipled.
The GOP subscribes to the erroneous notion that Adam Smith favored unregulated dog-eat-dog competition. It’s not a big leap from that to cutting ethical corners.
Also, GOP pols have been heavily oriented towards grifting ever since Richard Viguerie recognized the monetary possibilities of mail solicitations.
@Scott F.:
The difference is that Democrats still believe that, when elected, we should govern. We live in reality, and have actual ideals, and believe in responsibility.
MAGAs never seem to notice that when one of our assholes surfaces – Menendez, Hunter Biden – we drop them. No Democrat came to Bob Menendez’s defense. No Democrat GAF about Hunter.
@Steven L. Taylor: Add to that: these stories about Robinson are “more” not “new”. TPM was reporting on his problematic online presence starting in March of 2023, and the news that he frequented a porn peep show store was reported last month, and in between was a steady flow of similar stories. But those things don’t get much attention in the Republican media, so it seems it’s coming out of nowhere to people who get their news from such sites.
I have had overnight to consider Mark Robinson’s statements (I’m not discussing his porn use in this comment). I think that we are witnessing context collapse. I think in the context that he said them, the audience would understand them to be hyperbolic exaggerations of his positions, made for dramatic effect.
Let me note that for me personally, even with that reading, they are still disqualifying. It shows a lack of seriousness, a lack of respect for the office, and for the voters. Not to mention that if one exaggerates one’s positions by saying, “I regret women voting” – there’s no more moderate form of that statement that is palatable to me.
But to the audiences he said those things, there were probably chuckles. But if you take it out of that context it falls flat, like it’s doing now.
I’m not saying Steven is wrong. In fact, this probably reinforces his point. In order to get attention from primary voters, this sort of thing is probably necessary. Which makes it a big, big problem. If you had the party pols decide candidates in smoke-filled rooms, they wouldn’t be impressed by this stuff, at least not if said in public. Because they would know it hurts the brand.
@Scott F.: From Stephen
It’s also worth noting that Robinson is Lt. Governor. In most states, the person who lands in this role is essentially the Party’s choice. If this is true for NC as well, Robinson didn’t come out of nowhere in spite of the Party, but was instead groomed by them.
@Scott F.:
Florida and New York would like a word with you…
@Jen: It’s late September, and the expression comes from before early voting.
@Scott F.:
“Chait_NYMAG”
As to the porn use, I’m not into kink-shaming. But he is. That’s the problem. There’s another, maybe deeper issue, if he was into trans porn.
The issue there is that means what he knows of trans people is “sexual kink”. That’s his experience. But it has very little to do with the lives of so many trans people. For some it is a kink. For most, it’s a way to have their social existence more congruent with their internal understanding of themselves.
Which, I would bet, is not an idea that the likes of Mark Robinson has ever entertained.
@Michael Reynolds: @MarkedMan:
I agree with you both. I’m just trying to push the discussion where I believe it needs to be in order to move the country out of hyper-polarization and in a better direction. And to be completely transparent, I believe that better direction runs through the end of the Republican Party as it stands.
I keep seeing “it’s Trump” and once he’s gone, the GOP will right the ship. Or “they’re just giving their voters what they want” as if there is no party establishment with any kind of agency. Both these sentiments elide the fact that the Republican Party is a failed institution in a system where failure isn’t inevitable, as the Democrats demonstrate by not failing themselves.
I believe there are only two viable routes out of our current political dysfunction. One way is Trump and the Republicans win more power and they end democracy by fiat. This is what Project 2025 proposes. The other (preferable) way is much harder – a defeat of the GOP at the ballot box so profound up and down the ticket that whatever exists as influence in whatever remains of that institution reorganizes or dissolves.
So, I’m going to continue to hang Trump, Robinson, MTG, Gaetz, etc. around the necks of everyone with an R by their name down to the local elections for dog catcher. I’m going to continue to call out Republican politicians’ fear of their own base as rank cowardice unworthy of any respect or deference. No excuses; full agency; damn them all for complicity; guilt them all by association.
@charontwo:
Thanks for sharing that. Chait’s probably making my point better than I am.
My one pushback on that Chait quote is that Trump is not “stark raving mad”. What he is is entitled by a life of privilege. He thinks he knows best, better than all the so-called experts who are advising him, and he’ll do whatever he thinks is good to do.
He got this way from being rich from birth. I’ve seen very smart people get this way, too. They are too accustomed to being the smartest person in the room, and decide that they can ignore anything anybody else says.
It’s possible that Trump has figured out he’s going to lose, and figures he might as well enjoy himself while doing it. And grift a bit more money out of people.
@Fortune: Yes, I know. I’ve worked on campaigns.
The point, which you are ignoring, is that a news story timed in a way that still (barely) might allow for a candidate to step down, possibly triggering a court to halt the sending of the ballots, is not a Hail Mary move by Democrats, who are in better shape with Robinson in the race.
@Scott F.:
Further on this from Heather Cox Richardson:
“Link”
@Sleeping Dog: Men counseling men and women counselling women was a standard of fundamentalism back when I was young. Fundies were not wrong about everything. (Or even most things as related to matters of the spirit and Christianity. But they were headstrong and arrogant, unfortunately.)
@CSK: Translation from MAGAese:
We don’t care. He’s against trannys and queers and abortion. That’s all that matters.
@charontwo:
I hadn’t read that from Heather Cox Richardson, but I had seen this from Jonathan V Last:
I’m drawn to this specific punditry. I’m so bloody tired of the dysfunction, it’s become important to me that we at least try to leverage this moment to break away from the political stalemate we are in. It’s one of the reasons I am so gratified by the Harris/Walz campaign leveraging people’s exhaustion in order to get us to “turn the page.” It won’t be enough to defeat Trump, but leave the Republicans in control of the Senate or the House. Go Big. What other choice is there?
@Scott F.: I honestly don’t think the difference is anything the Democrats are doing differently; the difference is who the Republicans have become. The Republicans are a party of angry people, disappointed about a world that is foreign to their values and experience, and who can’t adapt to it. And I don’t think this is exclusively a US problem. Conservatism all over the world seems to be the same kind of throes. Witness rising fascism on the right in so many places. At its core, conservatism is, finally, about faith in the virtues of aristocracy. When people no longer believe in the virtues of “rule by our (hereditary) betters,” what will arise to fill the void? I have no idea.
@MarkedMan:
This does not appear to be the case in this situation. From Wikipedia:
I suppose that one could make the argument that the alleged grifting shows that he was groomed for the job, though.![😉](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f609.svg)
@Jay L Gischer:
Yes, it will be hard for Democrats to attack Robinson on this without stepping on the landmine of shaming people for their private sexual peccadillos, a no-no for liberals.
I haven’t done a deep dive into Robinson’s comments or the porn site in question, nor do I intend to. However, based on my background in therapy, education, and personal encounters with various fetish communities (an inevitable side effect of being queer and sexually active), it’s important to note that raceplay as a sexual kink is distinct from outright racism.
From what has been reported, Robinson’s comments don’t appear to be sexual in nature, and thus wouldn’t typically be categorized as raceplay. Of course, it’s possible that context was omitted—perhaps for reasons of sanitation and reader palatability, or, depending on your viewpoint, to smear Robinson among his base. Without seeing the full context, it’s hard to say definitively.
However, just looking at the reported posts, this seems less like a case of misunderstood kink and more like Clayton Bigsby-level cognitive dissonance –weird even within an in-group context, not just weird to outsiders aa most fetishes are.
But it’s very possible that the journalism here is biased or off the mark. I see no evidence these reporters are competent explainers of sexual fetishes and paraphilias. And it doesn’t seem like they consulted any psycholgists, sex therapists who might have added some nuance to the coverage.
@DK: Wow, that’s super interesting. Thanks for the info.
I agree that at least two healthy, viable, parties that are responsive to voters are needed. And the Trump party does not count as one of them.
I think that what is needed to correct this is a beatdown, electorally. They have to lose, and lose big. They have to be repudiated by the body politic as “we don’t want that”. They have tried to boil the frog slowly, but the fact is, that old saw doesn’t actually work. At some point it gets too hot and the frog jumps out of the pot.
Honestly, I think this is very similar to why Putin needs to be defeated in Ukraine. If not, he’ll keep doing it. Authoritarians/Imperialists never stop until they lose.
@Jay L Gischer:
Robinson wrote:
What context is to collapse. That’s how tons of straight men talk about us. We’re perfectly good to fuck. Perfectly good to rape. Perfectly good to murder. That’s the exact context. We are nothing but disposable whores at best and a convenient scapegoat most of the time. I’ve lived this context my whole life. This was the context that a group of men used to threaten to violently rape and beat me while I was on the CTA.
Further,
Let me tell you,with rage and contempt, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself with Blanchard’s dick. Fuck you and fuck anyone who believes that nightmare.
Absolutely no one transitions because it’s a kink. You have no fucking clue how harmful and hateful that shit is. The idea that we transition because it’s a kink has harmed so many people. The reason we are stuck with that shit is because cis people have no fucking clue what it is to be trans. You make people’s lives materially harder spouting off that garbage.
You should absolutely be ashamed of yourself.
@Michael Reynolds:
Democrats are even willing to sacrifice their flawed but otherwise sane and public-minded creeps, like Al Franken. There is zero chance that the GOP would turn on even a proven child molester who could be depended on to reliably vote the party line. See, e.g., George Santos.
@Scott F.:
Or, alternatively, for the GOP to go the way of the Know-Nothings and Mugwumps, and for the Democratic party to split into its two natural factions, the Progressives and the Liberals. Which would, inevitably, spawn an eventual conservative third party. Labor, Whigs, and Tories. What a concept.
Because I want to let everyone know that I am not ignoring some of the issues/questions raised, a few quick points that maybe some day I will find the time, energy, and inspiration to expand upon.
1. As noted above, I think we need at least two real parties, so I have concerns about how the current institutional structures affect the degeneration of the GOP.
2. Maybe the effects of the porous nature of out weak parties are truly asymmetric and will always be so, leading to bad GOP behavior but normal Democratic behavior. I am not sure that that is true, but that doesn’t change my basic assessment.
3. I do think that there are ideological forces that mean are influence reactionary populism on the right in the US (and we are seeing it globally as well).
4. I am skeptical that Democrats/the left are immune from such nonsense, so just because they seem the most normal now, doesn’t mean it will ever be thus.
5. Keep in mind the structure of the current party system really only dates to 1994-ish (I have written about this before). And while you all may not have liked Bush, Romney, and McCain, they were largely “normal” Republicans.
@DrDaveT: If we could get some significant electoral reform, then I think we might get a party system as you describe.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Thanks for that. I stand corrected.