When Brian Beutler wrote his column at the New Republic yesterday, he did not know whether North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis would win the Senate GOP primary or whether Tillis would find himself in a July run-off.
But what Beutler knew for sure was that a recently resurfaced video from 2011 — before Romney made his condemnable “47 percent” comments — would show Tillis “[fusing] all of the ugliest elements of conservative politics into one mustache-twiddling, Bond-villainesque soliloquy laying bare the GOP’s ‘divide and conquer’ strategy to undermine the social safety net.”
This is the video
And this is what Tillis said:
What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance. We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition, that needs help and that we should help. And we need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government and say, ‘at some point you’re on your own! We may end up taking care of those babies, but we’re not taking care of you.’ And we’ve got to start having that serious discussion. It won’t happen next year. Wrong time. Because it’s going to be politically charged. One of the reasons why I may never run for another elected office is cause some of these things may just get me railroaded out of town. But in 2013 I honestly believe that we have to do it.
Beutler “checks” the following boxes:
Class warfare? Check.
Racist dog whistle? Check.
A belabored explication of the political utility of racist dog whistling? Check.
An acknowledgment that this strategy must be deployed at strategic moments, because it can backfire? Check.
He may be right on some of these “checks.” I don’t know enough about the man — or GOP strategy — to draw such definitive conclusions.
But on one of his checked boxes, Butler was totally wrong.
On “A further acknowledgment that admitting to the strategy can be career ending?” Butler says “Check.”
Not so.
Republicans in North Carolina last night voted to promote and enhance Tillis’ career by nominating him to be the next North Carolina U.S. Senator.
Tillis’ career is well on course, even though, when his remarks surfaced in 2011, he told the Charlotte Observer that while “divide and conquer” was a “poor choice of words,” he stood by his other remarks, “including the suggestion that North Carolina consider drug-testing people on public assistance,” according to Beutler.
Beutler concludes, mind you, before the results were in:
Now that he’s a U.S. Senate candidate, there’s a decent chance that Republicans outside of North Carolina will have to take a position on his comments. Perhaps they’ll condemn them. But there’s next to no chance that they or other conservatives will admit that this kind of thinking is represents anything other than an aberration. That would require them to cast aside the blinders. The problem is, his remarks were reported on at the time. And the national party still backed him.
North Carolina Republicans definitely “still backed him.”
