As Mark Sumner and Jeff Singer have shown in their pre-election reporting on the guy who just won North Carolina’s Republican primary contest for governor, our friends in the state should have a much easier time spurring otherwise reluctant Democratic and independent voters to show up at the polls come November. Because this guy, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, is about as politically stinky as they come these days.
In short, he’s a Holocaust-denying, gay-hating, red-baiting, conspiracy-flogging, Trump-adoring, woman-denigrating Christian nationalist. This candidate has called gun reform activists who survived school mass shootings “prosti-tots” and sneered at actresses whom he asserted wore “whore dresses to protest sexual harassment.” Himself Black, he has called other Black people “apes” and “monkeys.” He has trashed Martin Luther King as an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist.” For his part, Donald Trump endorsed Robinson, saying he is “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Robinson has posted Hitler quotes on his social media and in 2017 posted a Confederate battle flag with the Rebel-fellating title of “Resist the ‘Resistance’.” Like other devout Christians, he believes God created everything for a purpose and makes no mistakes, but he questions what purpose homosexuals serve.
And surprise, surprise, besides everything else, Robinson thinks climate change is a hoax. Here’s Adam Aton at Climate Wire:
Robinson, who as lieutenant governor sits on the State Board of Education, also wrote that elementary schools should only teach reading, writing and math — not science.
“In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies. We don’t need to be teaching science,” he wrote. “We surely don’t need to be talking about equity and social justice.” [...]
"We have now allowed those folks to dictate what we do based on pseudoscience, junk science that has not proven a single solitary thing,” he said in a speech last year at a Baptist church.
"These people that are at the college telling your young people that it's the climate change is gonna kill us all — these people, I'm gonna say it right now, they are liars,” he said, raising his voice to a shout. “Liars!”
It would be easy to chalk up this climate science denial simply to ignorance. However, given Robinson’s panoply of loathsome stances on so many matters, allowing him to escape via the numbskull excuse is far too generous. It’s not ignorance, it’s malicious disinformation.
The good news: His winning the GOP candidacy adds one more advantage to the popular Democrat in the race: North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein.