The best and funniest take on the Mark Robinson hilarity, from The Bulwark . . .

[torbee]

​ Mark Robinson Proves—Again—That the Republican Party Is a Failed State​ The GOP is an impotent institution.​ Jonathan V. Last Sep 20 ∙ 1. A Failed State​ I don’t get what the big deal is. He’s just an honest, God-fearing man who loves guns, America, and watching dudes go to town on chicks with dicks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But there are two important points to discuss concerning Mark Robinson. First: Why were yesterday’s revelations supposed to be so damning? Robinson exists in a context in which every one of his supposed sins has been normalized by the Republican party. He talks about enjoying “tranny” pr0n? That’s just locker-room talk. He says he’s a “black Nazi”? The Republican presidential nominee invited an actual neo-Nazi to dine with him at his residence. He bad mouths Martin Luther King, Jr.? That’s just a joke. Look at how it triggers the libs because they hate free speech, what with their cancel culture snowflake blah-blah-blah. Point is: Why should any of yesterday’s stories about Robinson disqualify him in the minds of Republican voters? There’s nothing new in there. Nothing that they haven’t already excused a dozen times for Donald Trump, or Elon Musk, or Herschel Walker, or Laura Loomer, or any number of others. Those permission structures are almost a decade old and at this point, they’re less like hidden smuggler trails and more like a 12-lane freeway for rationalization. The second, and more important point, is this: Why wasn’t the Republican party able to push Mark Robinson aside? Up until last night, the GOP in North Carolina could have replaced its gubernatorial candidate. Robinson is going to lose this race. He’s going to lose it so badly that he might pull the top of the ticket down with him. And he’s going to lose it dishonorably. He isn’t Barry Goldwater going down to defeat because of his principles. What happened is that the Republican Party of North Carolina got hijacked by an insane person. And when the fit hit the shan, the NC GOP didn’t have the ability to push this insane person aside. This is the difference between a healthy institution and a failed institution. Say what you will about the Democratic party, but it is a healthy institution. What do I mean by that? Institutions have power centers and interests. In a healthy institution, these power centers can unite to achieve shared interests, even in difficult moments which require sacrifice. For instance: In 2008 Hillary Clinton was the supposed to be the Democratic presidential nominee. But various Democratic power centers coordinated to elevate Barack Obama, who they believed was a better candidate. In 2016, a Democratic Socialist tried to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The party coordinated to prevent him from doing so. In 2020, the same Democratic Socialist made another attempt. The party coalesced around Joe Biden and got him elected president. In 2023, as Republicans went through four nominees to find a speaker of the House, Democrats voted, unanimously, time after time, for Hakeem Jeffries. And in 2024, when the Democratic party realized that Joe Biden was compromised as a candidate by his health, they convinced him to step aside. I want to underscore this: The Democratic party was able to convince a sitting president to abandon his reelection attempt four months before November. And the Republican party can’t push a single arriviste gubernatorial candidate off his spot after he gets clocked calling himself a “black Nazi” who likes watching kinky porn while talking about how he wishes he owned slaves. This is what I mean when I say that the Republican party is a failed institution. Will Saletan was the first person to make this observation, way back in January of 2016, when he observed that the Republican party had become a failed state. If you are a Democrat, this is not cause for celebration. Failed states are dangerous. They are inherently unstable. They are breeding grounds for extremism. Even if you live in a perfectly well-functioning country, having a failed state on your border is a substantial threat to your security. In the case of the Republican party, this failed state is not sitting across a border. It is inside the house. It makes up half of our body politic. If the Republican party had pushed Mark Robinson aside yesterday, it would have increased the party’s chances of winning the gubernatorial election in North Carolina and also increased Donald Trump’s chances of winning the presidency. Which, in the near term, is disadvantageous to the cause of democracy. But also: It would have been a sign that somewhere inside the GOP, there remained some institutional strength. No matter how many elections Democrats win, our system cannot survive in the long term with only a single healthy political party. We need either (1) a healthy Republican party, or (2) the GOP to be supplanted by a new, healthy, political institution. I can’t see how we get to (1) and history shows that (2) is an incredibly heavy lift. So yes, it’s fun to laugh at Mark Robinson and Republican ineptitude. And his continued candidacy helps Kamala Harris. But at the end of the day, the Republican party’s problems are our problems, too. Our democracy cannot be safe so long as the Republican party is in disarray.​

 

[tarheelbybirth]

​ ​ Mark Robinson Proves—Again—That the Republican Party Is a Failed State​ ​ The GOP is an impotent institution.​ Jonathan V. Last Sep 20 ∙ ​ 1. A Failed State​ I don’t get what the big deal is. He’s just an honest, God-fearing man who loves guns, America, and watching dudes go to town on chicks with dicks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But there are two important points to discuss concerning Mark Robinson. First: Why were yesterday’s revelations supposed to be so damning? Robinson exists in a context in which every one of his supposed sins has been normalized by the Republican party. He talks about enjoying “tranny” pr0n? That’s just locker-room talk. He says he’s a “black Nazi”? The Republican presidential nominee invited an actual neo-Nazi to dine with him at his residence. He bad mouths Martin Luther King, Jr.? That’s just a joke. Look at how it triggers the libs because they hate free speech, what with their cancel culture snowflake blah-blah-blah. Point is: Why should any of yesterday’s stories about Robinson disqualify him in the minds of Republican voters? There’s nothing new in there. Nothing that they haven’t already excused a dozen times for Donald Trump, or Elon Musk, or Herschel Walker, or Laura Loomer, or any number of others. Those permission structures are almost a decade old and at this point, they’re less like hidden smuggler trails and more like a 12-lane freeway for rationalization.​ The second, and more important point, is this: Why wasn’t the Republican party able to push Mark Robinson aside? Up until last night, the GOP in North Carolina could have replaced its gubernatorial candidate. Robinson is going to lose this race. He’s going to lose it so badly that he might pull the top of the ticket down with him. And he’s going to lose it dishonorably. He isn’t Barry Goldwater going down to defeat because of his principles. What happened is that the Republican Party of North Carolina got hijacked by an insane person. And when the fit hit the shan, the NC GOP didn’t have the ability to push this insane person aside. This is the difference between a healthy institution and a failed institution.​ Say what you will about the Democratic party, but it is a healthy institution. What do I mean by that? Institutions have power centers and interests. In a healthy institution, these power centers can unite to achieve shared interests, even in difficult moments which require sacrifice. For instance: In 2008 Hillary Clinton was the supposed to be the Democratic presidential nominee. But various Democratic power centers coordinated to elevate Barack Obama, who they believed was a better candidate. In 2016, a Democratic Socialist tried to win the Democratic presidential nomination. The party coordinated to prevent him from doing so. In 2020, the same Democratic Socialist made another attempt. The party coalesced around Joe Biden and got him elected president. In 2023, as Republicans went through four nominees to find a speaker of the House, Democrats voted, unanimously, time after time, for Hakeem Jeffries. And in 2024, when the Democratic party realized that Joe Biden was compromised as a candidate by his health, they convinced him to step aside. I want to underscore this: The Democratic party was able to convince a sitting president to abandon his reelection attempt four months before November. And the Republican party can’t push a single arriviste gubernatorial candidate off his spot after he gets clocked calling himself a “black Nazi” who likes watching kinky porn while talking about how he wishes he owned slaves. This is what I mean when I say that the Republican party is a failed institution.​ Will Saletan was the first person to make this observation, way back in January of 2016, when he observed that the Republican party had become a failed state. If you are a Democrat, this is not cause for celebration. Failed states are dangerous. They are inherently unstable. They are breeding grounds for extremism. Even if you live in a perfectly well-functioning country, having a failed state on your border is a substantial threat to your security. In the case of the Republican party, this failed state is not sitting across a border. It is inside the house. It makes up half of our body politic. If the Republican party had pushed Mark Robinson aside yesterday, it would have increased the party’s chances of winning the gubernatorial election in North Carolina and also increased Donald Trump’s chances of winning the presidency. Which, in the near term, is disadvantageous to the cause of democracy. But also: It would have been a sign that somewhere inside the GOP, there remained some institutional strength. No matter how many elections Democrats win, our system cannot survive in the long term with only a single healthy political party. We need either (1) a healthy Republican party, or (2) the GOP to be supplanted by a new, healthy, political institution. I can’t see how we get to (1) and history shows that (2) is an incredibly heavy lift. So yes, it’s fun to laugh at Mark Robinson and Republican ineptitude. And his continued candidacy helps Kamala Harris. But at the end of the day, the Republican party’s problems are our problems, too. Our democracy cannot be safe so long as the Republican party is in disarray.​

And this is why I have such disdain for anyone still calling themselves a Republican - including Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney. They are truly RINOs in the absolute sense of that term, yet they continue to play their roles as if they matter to their party. Anyone with a sense of decency needs to abandon that "failed institution" and work to make sure they don't win another election for dog-catcher. The only course forward is to make them irrelevant and replace them.