The Middling Thom Tillis

 

Interesting interview Sen. Thom Tillis gave Calen Razor and Ursula Perano for NOTUS.org:

“We’re a decidedly purple state,” Tillis said. “I’ve got Republicans saying it’s trending red, and I got Democrats saying it’s trending blue, and no — when you’ve got the unaffiliated base now at over 40%, it’s an independent state, and I love that. The way you win in North Carolina is you’re gonna win somewhere around 49%, maybe 50%.”

“And it’s all about a million people who you know are in the middle,” he added.

True dat.

Being "middling" (in his passion for trumpism). incidentally, is precisely what got Tillis censured by the North Carolina Republican Party in 2023. He had associated himself with a push to codify same-sex and interracial marriage, and he'd also been caught in the act of cooperating with Democrats on a big border bill that would have helped if not fixed many of the problems. Something had shifted in Tillis -- he had tried to ban gay marriage in NC when he was House Speaker -- and it might have been nothing more mysterious than a sharp political instinct. "Senator" was a different game altogether.

Razor and Perano detail Tillis's conservative orthodoxy during his speakership of the NCHouse -- two terms, starting in 2011. "He worked to increase restrictions on abortion, led efforts to block the expansion of Medicaid, fought for tighter voting ID requirements...."

Tillis may be no trumpist. He's also no moderate. He hews to classic conservatism about who gets to control women's bodies, on just how we shouldn't oughta be "coddling the poor," on limiting who can vote -- the hallmarks of Tillis's tenure in the NCHouse -- and he's distinguished himself now by voting for every freak that Trump wanted on his Cabinet and staying silent when he should be pounding tabletops. Just days ago Tillis was warning that Putin "is a cancer." What has he said since yesterday?

 

According to The Hill, which cornered Tillis for a comment on the Zelenskyy betrayal and the White House ambush, Tillis wimped out with "concern" that ultimately degraded to "let Trump be Trump":

“I’m concerned with anything that would ultimately allow there to be a moral equivalency between Zelensky and Putin..." [Tillis said]

  

"The president has used some fairly successful, aggressive negotiating tactics in the past, so I’ll give him latitude for now,” Tillis continued. “But at the end of the day, Putin needs to be a loser and the Ukrainian people need to be the winners. Let’s get past the leadership personalities and talk about what’s most important: a free Ukraine, not for its own sake, but for the sake of national security, the United States, European security.”

Yeah, middling senator.