Conservative Activists Kicked Out of Haywood County Republican Party

“The Haywood Five” pose with cutouts
of former vice presidential candidate and
Alaskan governor Sarah Palin and President
Donald Trump at the Haywood Republican
Alliance headquarters. From left: Monroe Miller,
Richard West, Eddie Cabe, Paul Yeager and Jeremy Davis.
Photo Haywood Republican Alliance

When's the last time you've heard of party activists -- of either major political party -- getting drummed out of the corps? Well, actually, the Watauga Republican Party has indulged in some freelance purification rites, but it never got to the level it reached in Raleigh recently, with a "trial" for party disloyalty and a resulting ban against some Haywood County gentlemen from holding party offices "for three to five years."

The state's Republican Executive Committee, comprised of Republicans from across the state, convened a star chamber enclave in Raleigh on Saturday that essentially threw the men out of the GOP, though the proceedings were secret and not many people are talking about it ... except for the five notorious conservatives themselves who've started their own rump organization (the Haywood Republican Alliance) and are planning a big mock celebration, a "Party Disloyalty Party."

The allegations against the men mainly center on their support in 2016 of a conservative Democrat over an incumbent Republican Haywood commissioner, to the extent of doctoring slate cards given out at polling places. (For the record, the conservative Democrat came in dead last in polling while the targeted Republican incumbent, apparently a horrible "moderate," kept his seat). The Haywood Five were also accused of being generally disagreeable and disruptive characters who had hyper-sensitive noses for "RINOs" (Republicans In Name Only).

By implication, they're also "not normal." According to the Haywood Republican Party Chair, who brought the charges against the five, “That’s why I am doing this, is to get candidates to run for office who are normal everyday people,” he said. “When you have this kind of people in there, scrutinizing every move everybody makes and going after people that don’t agree with their warped agenda, you can’t get good people.”