Madison Cawthorn scandal exposes how the GOP depends on right-wing media to delude their basehttps://www.rawstory.com/madison-cawthorn-scandal-exposes-how-the-gop-depends-on-right-wing-media-to-delude-their-base/Republicans never liked Madison Cawthorn — and now they're trying to destroy him
Republicans have had enough of first-term Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) and are ready to send him packing after just two years.
Cawthorn's troubles began last month when he claimed that people he admired had invited him to an orgy and used cocaine in front of him, and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy turned against the North Carolina congressman and damaging leaks started coming out as he faces a primary battle against establishment candidates, reported Independent correspondent Eric Garcia.
"The opposition research about him now falling off the back of the GOP truck is prodigious," Garcia wrote. "But the real question is why Cawthorn is the target, particularly given there are equally controversial members in the caucus, including some who, like him, helped incite a literal insurrection."
While the cocaine orgies make for a lurid topic for gossip, the truth is that Republicans never really liked Cawthorn in the first place and were saddled with him because Mark Meadows resigned from that congressional seat to become Donald Trump's chief of staff and got the former president to endorse family friend Lynda Bennett, who flopped.
“The original sin in all of this is the son of a b**ch Mark Meadows,” a Republican source told Garcia, "[for] the way he blocked those other legislators from running."
Cawthorn also irked the GOP establishment in North Carolina by moving to a newly drawn congressional district, which was eventually struck down by the state Supreme Court, and returned to run in his old district as state House speaker Tim Moore was considering a run himself.
"If Cawthorn does lose," Garcia concluded, "it will be because enough Republicans didn’t like how he p*ssed all over them – and they intend to make sure it ends with him soiling himself."
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/madison-cawthorn-republican-cocaine-primary-b2068354.htmlMadison Cawthorn is a 'monster of Republicans' own creation' -- and he won't be the last: columnistAccording to the Washington Post's Dana Millbank, the leadership of the Republican Party would like to see Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) go away so they won't have to answer for his almost daily antics including repeatedly being stopped for speeding while driving on an expired license to trying to take guns on planes to blurting out stories about drug-fueled conservative orgies in Washington D.C.
As the longtime political observer notes, even if voters in Cawthorn's district oust him -- there will be more Cawthorn's coming down the pike in the upcoming midterm election and elections beyond November.
With Cawthorn vying for media attention with fellow freshman House members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, Millbank suggested that North Carolina Republican's extracurricular activities are proving to be more than mainstream lawmakers are willing to put up with.
However, those same lawmakers are the same ones who not only made a "monster" like Cawthorn possible in the first place but eased the path to him winning in 2020.
"Ousting Cawthorn in his May primary won’t cure this Republican illness; the North Carolina congressman is just a symptom," the Washington Post columnist wrote. "More than 50 QAnon believers have run for Congress as Republicans in 2022, the liberal watchdog Media Matters reports. Several who participated in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have run for Congress. If Republicans succeed in taking the House in November, the new majority could make the current Congress — with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert and the rest — look like Periclean Athens."
The reason for the rise of what a "Morning Joe" panel on Friday called the "lunatic fringe" taking over the party, is a culmination of years of increasingly incendiary rhetoric along with changes at the state level where gerrymandering has created unassailable GOP districts, Millbank said.
"Cawthorn and the many rising oddballs and extremists are the inevitable result of Republican leaders’ choices: drawing increasingly uncompetitive districts, blessing unlimited dark money, exercising timid leadership, embracing disinformation, flirting with white nationalism, stoking conspiracies and undermining elections," he wrote.
The columnist claims the North Carolina Republican understood the prevailing winds and took advantage of it as far back as 2015 when he told a newspaper, "I absolutely will run for Congress," with Millbank pointedly adding, "And so he did, on the basis of audacious lies and winks at white nationalists."
Listing off a varied selection of controversies Cawthorn has enmeshed himself in -- including accusations of sexual improprieties -- the Washington Post columnist claimed Republicans still haven't learned their lesson with some GOP leaders backing his re-election because he received the nod from former president Donald Trump.
As he put it: "Now that their young gun is going off half-cocked, Republicans have only themselves to blame."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/29/madison-cawthorn-republicans-created-guns-photos/
