At least one Congressman from the kookiest MAGA wing of the GOP (and that’s saying something) won’t be back for another term:
Rep. Madison Cawthorn conceded his race in the GOP primary for North Carolina's 11th District to opponent Chuck Edwards in a phone call, Cawthorn spokesperson Luke Ball said.
Edwards confirmed the call in remarks to supporters.
"I received a call from Congressman Cawthorn just a few of minutes ago. Just as I expected, he presented himself in a very classy and humble way and offered his support to our campaign in absolutely anyway that we can use him," the state senator said.
Edwards was one of seven candidates looking to oust the Trump-backed Cawthorn. He was backed by North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis as well as state Senate leader Phil Berger and a number of other North Carolina Republicans.
Trump doubled down on his support for Cawthorn earlier this week, asking voters to give the firebrand freshman, who is the youngest member of the US House, "a second chance."
Cawthorn recently sparked uproar in the Republican Party after claiming on a podcast that he had been invited to an orgy in Washington and had personally seen leaders in the efforts to curb drug addiction doing cocaine -- one incident in a string of recent controversies surrounding Cawthorn that included calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a "thug" and the Ukrainian government "incredibly evil."
Cawthorn also last month was cited for bringing a loaded handgun through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport -- the second time in just over a year that airport authorities had stopped him with a gun. In March, he faced charges of driving with a revoked license for the second time in five years.
In addition to publicly and privately rooting for Cawthorn to lose his North Carolina primary race on Tuesday, some Republicans had already started preparing for how to deal with him if he returned to Congress after becoming a party pariah, CNN previously reported.
The lesson is clear: Trump’s Republican Party will muster its considerable resources to boot you from office if you embarrass the party by making unfounded (?) allegations about orgies and drug use and stuff.
Baby steps, I guess. It looks like the insurrectionist Kathy Barnette surge in the Pennsylvania Senate primary stalled as well, after Trump and Sean Hannity told viewers she was enelectable and extreme. (Barnette has said she won’t support the nominee if she doesn’t win, another data point for my assertion that massive Republican gains this November aren’t a foregone conclusion.)
On the other hand, this kind of tells me the GOP establishment can get rid of its more extreme officials when it really tries, but it does so only sparingly. The candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania is really something:
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