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You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2018 / Repub Values Open Thread: Corey “Leeeeroy!” Stewart

Repub Values Open Thread: Corey “Leeeeroy!” Stewart

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With such a Boss Hogg meat-mugg, I guess ol’ Corey figured he’d be wasting an asset in his hometown Duluth…

… Stewart is not a “Confederate Symbols Defender.” Neither is he a “bombastic conservative.” He is an unapologetic public racist, and damned proud of it, who goes out of his way to associate with other unapologetic public racists, who are damned proud of it, too. Here’s a little flashback from The Washington Post at the time of the terrorist attack in Charlottesville:

“All the weak Republicans, they couldn’t apologize fast enough,” Stewart said in an interview with The Washington Post. “They played right into the hands of the left wing. Those [Nazi] people have nothing to do with the Republican Party. There was no reason to apologize.” However, Stewart has made several joint appearances with ­Jason Kessler, organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally that sparked the unrest in Charlottesville. Stewart met Kessler at an event earlier this year to protest the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park in Charlottesville. And at one point during the primary race, Stewart attended a Charlottesville news conference with Kessler and Isaac Smith, founders of Unity and Security for America (USA), a fledgling group that calls for “defending Western Civilization.”

… There simply is not a Democratic equivalent to an outright neo-Confederate’s getting a nomination for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Stewart shows, once again, that the prion disease remains active throughout the Republican Party at every level, and this at a time in which the people who could do the most to recreate the party’s immune system are too timid or too nuts to do it. Doug Jones’ surprise win in Alabama wasn’t enough to keep Republican voters in Virginia from nominating Zombie Jeff Davis, despite the fact that doing so might turn out to be a termination notice for a Republican majority in Congress…

Stewart’s got his defenders, of course…

So, there’s at least one non-political-junkie who remembers the name of HRC’s 2016 running mate.

The other Republicans are somewhat less enthused about Mr. Stewart, per Politico:

… The Senate GOP’s campaign arm hasn’t endorsed Stewart, who has made defending Confederate monuments a central plank of his political career. And its chairman said that the committee has “no plans” to spend any money on Stewart in his race against Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

“At the senatorial committee we’re focusing on Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, West Virginia and Florida. There are great races around the country. [Virginia] is not the map,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). “We have a big map this year, and what I’ve laid out in races that I’ve talked about, Virginia’s not on it.”

“Sometimes in the primary process, the thing we try and get done is get the most electable candidate on the ballot in the fall. And that doesn’t always happen,” conceded Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 GOP leader.

And Thune, like other Republicans expressed ignorance of Stewart despite his affinity for earning press with stunts like protesting outside the RNC in 2016, which got him ousted from Trump’s official campaign apparatus. Stewart also drew criticism for refusing to condemn white nationalists after last year’s violent rally in Charlottesville.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), said he has “no idea who he is. Not at all.”

And Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, a two-time NRSC chair, couldn’t say whether he will endorse Stewart because he doesn’t know him.

“I’ve just heard a few things about him,” Cornyn said. “I just don’t know anything about him.”

The feeling is mutual. Stewart held a press conference outside the NRSC in May to rail against party leaders for not supporting his campaign…

GOP leaders had hoped to block Stewart, making a late play to boost state Del. Nick Freitas, who narrowly lost to Stewart on Tuesday evening. Republicans said privately it’s a huge blow to the Virginia GOP’s down-ticket races, particularly in competitive House races, even if they never saw a serious path to defeating Kaine….

It’s the GOP version of the prisoner’s dilemma: A Repub candidate can’t win a primary, in the current climate, without fellating Trump; but fellating Trump is poison in a general election. (Yes, as a lifelong Democrat, this makes me happy.)


 
Coda:

Reader Interactions

60Comments

  2. 2.

    Brickley Paiste

    Stewart is as shameless and toxic as Trump. He’ll animate the worst in the GOP to go all out to win. Write him off if you’re an idiot.

    This a thousand times.

    It’s bizarre to me that people seem to think that Trump is some black-swan aberration, rather than a distillation of everything the republican party has been about for 50 years.

  5. 5.

    Yarrow

    @eemom: They’re all relatively close in age. The two Corey’s who were teen idols are also in that general age group. Must have been a popular GenX name.

  8. 8.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)

    Well, this makes holding Kaine’s seat a whole lot easier, but we can’t just forget about it. There’s almost no fucking way Stewart can win this, but that leaves him with a slightly better shot than I’d like. We need to win this, too. Nobody thought a greasy weasel like Chinless Ed Gillespie had a shot four years ago, and he almost won. I won’t sleep easily until Kaine has won in November.

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Cory Stewart is simply a Nazi. No need to elaborate. Anyone who embraces the Dixie Swastika is, indeed, a Nazi.

  14. 14.

    Yarrow

    I love how all those Republicans are all, “Corey Stewart? Never heard of him.” Uh huh. They can run from him but they can’t hide. It’s our job to hang people like him around the necks of every single Republican. Make them own him.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @burnspbesq: Apparently they’re discussing that. The Southern Baptist Convention also came out with a good statement pushing back. And, amazingly enough, Franklin Graham made a pretty decent statement pushing back on this too.

  21. 21.

    Mandalay

    Tweets from Corey Stewart in the past few hours:

    Virginians wanted someone to kick @timkaine’s teeth in. I’m honored to have been selected for such a high honor.

    Starting right now, we’re going to kick the CRAP out of @timkaine every day until November 6th. Join us!

    Soooooo…..when they go low we go high?…

  24. 24.

    TriassicSands

    Clearly, Kaine has to go all out to win. While Stewart may be a weaker candidate than the thugs could have nominated, we must never underestimate the ignorance and depravity of the American voter.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I think that even the dumbest reasonably sincere Evangelicals are starting to say, Wait, we’re against killing babies in the womb but we’re for ripping them out of their mothers’ arms once they’re born? That doesn’t make any sense. Remember, their whole rationale is that they’re protecting poor, helpless babies from being murdered by their mothers, and now they’re supposed to support taking babies away from weeping mothers.

    Now the SBC, Graham, and the other preachers have to figure out how to thread that needle without imploding the whole game.

  28. 28.

    Mandalay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Franklin Graham made a pretty decent statement pushing back on this too

    I think the opposite is true; he’s deliberately creating strawmen to provide cover for Trump and Sessions:

    First of all, I think it’s disgraceful. It’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support that one bit. And I blame the politicians for the last 20, 30 years that have allowed this to escalate to the point where it is today.

    We are a country of laws; laws need to be obeyed, no question about that. But the situation that we have today is a result of our lawmakers in Washington over generations ignoring this and I’m hopeful that soon something could be done to fix it.

    Graham is saying that while the situation is disgraceful, it’s nothing to do with Trump or Sessions; they are just doing their jobs by faithfully executing the laws of the land, and the real blame lies with unnamed politicians in the past. It’s just a variation of Trump blaming the Democrats in order to let the guilty parties off the hook.

    Fuck that guy. Fuck him up his stupid ass. (h/t Steeplejack)

  31. 31.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mandalay:

    Loath as I am to admit it, I agree with you. This is Graham trying to thread that needle I alluded to above by mouthing a few platitudes about how awful it is that the poor, beleaguered Republicans have been forced by the cruel Democrats to rip babies away from their mothers.

    He’s trying to paper things over for his followers so they can say to themselves, Yes, imprisoning children and taking away babies is terrible, but it’s not our fault!

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @Hugely:

    I’m pretty sure that the foremost thought in Brooks’ mind when he was adapting his movie to a stage play was How can I make Nazis look like even bigger morons than I did the first time around? I know — gay Hitler!

    Fun fact: “Heil myself” is a joke he stole from Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be, one of the greatest black comedies of all time. Like all right-thinking people, Brooks idolizes Lubitsch. His remake of the Lubitsch movie is … not completely terrible? Has a couple of good moments?

  35. 35.

    frosty

    Several years ago, commenter dengre / dgreen (Dennis Green?) had a series of posts/comments discussing how US politics has been defined by three political parties, not two: Democrats, Republicans, and Confederates. From the Civil War until Nixon’s Southern Strategy, the Confederates “caucused” with the Democrats. Many of their Senators were Democratic chairmen of committees for years because of seniority. I thought his analysis was right on the money.

    Wallace pulled them away from the Democrats, and then Nixon, and subsequently Reagan, welcomed them. I think we are now seeing the end of this process. We are gravitating towards two parties, the Democrats and the Confederates, and who the hell knows where the Republicans are right now. They sure aren’t in charge of the party that carries their name.

    ETA:Sigh. Another insightful (I hope) comment on a dead thread. Maybe another time.

  36. 36.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mandalay:
    Going high when the other side goes low doesn’t necessarily win an election, true, especially with those who resent being reminded that they are not siding with the better person in a given contest; but then Michelle Obama didn’t offer it as campaigning advice.

  37. 37.

    Millard Filmore

    @frosty:

    Another insightful (I hope) comment on a dead thread.

    I liked your comment. It gives clear insight to our current situation. And this thread is still the last one posted so it is not dead yet.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    “Oh for the days when the lower limit we had to show support for was a witch.”

    :)

  41. 41.

    Aleta

    In February 2017, Virgil Lee Adams was arrested and charged with robbery and assault. In August, he was found not guilty, the Portland Mercury reports. Yet, he spent 16 months in jail on unrelated charges—even though he hadn’t been found guilty of those crime, either.

    While behind bars Adams missed the birth of his child, but the community rallied around to get him out in time for Father’s Day, thanks to donations to Portland Bail Out, which paid his $10,000 bail, the Mercury reports. “This case highlights the injustices of the cash bail system, a system that preys on people of color and the poor,” said Gina Spencer of Portland Bail Out.

    The Bail Project describes the toll America’s cash bail system takes on prisoners.
    “On any given night in America, 450,000 people are in local jails without being convicted of a crime — the vast majority of whom are there solely due to financial hardship,” they write. ” That’s about the total number of people who live in Miami.”

    As is true of all segments of America’s criminal justice system, poor people of color are the ones who suffer the brunt of the problem. “These people are disproportionately of color, and for them, there are only two choices: Plead guilty to their charge, or sit in jail until backlogged court systems can hear their case — which can often take weeks or months. This isn’t how bail is supposed to work.”

    The U.S. bail system is supposed to serve as incentive to ensure the accused makes their court appearance. “It wasn’t intended to keep people in jail who couldn’t afford to pay,” the Bail Project explains.

    Raw Story

  42. 42.

    Joyce H

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    What’s happening to the GOP in Virginia sounds like what happened to the GOP here in CA, they’ve completely lost their minds.

    Uh, no. In Virginia, it’s not ‘happening’ – they’ve always been this way. I’m convinced that the reason Virginia is turning blue is because the VA GOP simply cannot bring themselves to nominate a candidate who doesn’t make reasonable people hurl. They sometimes hold conventions instead of primaries for the state offices, and then there was usually someone electable at the top of the ticket, but as a sop to the howling masses, the Lt Gov or Commonwealth’s Attorney slot would be one of the frothers. Then you’d see cars that had one, and ONLY one, bumper sticker, and it would be the frothing lunatic. It can lead to weird results. In VA, the Gov and Lt. Gov don’t run as a ticket but on separate lines on the ballot. So we had a situation where we had a Republican governor and a Democratic lt governor, because the general electorate just couldn’t stomach the GOP’s lt gov choice.

    In primaries, the mob overwhelms the party bosses, to the extent that the mob has pretty much replaced the old party bosses. But I’ve lived here for almost thirty years and this isn’t new, it’s been going on the whole time.

    As for the Confederate flag and ‘heritage’, Corey Stewart is from Minnesota. Just like George Allen was from California. I suspect that race in the south would be in a better place if there weren’t so many of these guys moving here because they figure this is a place where they can feel comfortable as a bigot.

  43. 43.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Joyce H: Remember Nixon was from California, we’ve had crazy here for decades. The OC was a hotbed for Birchers and my fair city used to be the western HQ of American Nazi Party. This cycle we have John Cox running for Governor, he’s hugging Trump as hard as he can.

  44. 44.

    Jeffro

    @Mandalay: @Mnemosyne: Whenever you hear Republicans crying about “politicians doing X” or “it’s terrible that Y is happening”…and THEY’RE the ones in power…you know it’s an issue that could blow up in their faces if the blame were properly placed.

    Make them own it, every time.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    @Joyce H:

    I’m convinced that the reason Virginia is turning blue is because the VA GOP simply cannot bring themselves to nominate a candidate who doesn’t make reasonable people hurl.

    They just can’t let the racism go, so they nominate racists and lose, and then double down. It’s a death spiral of stupid.

    On the flip side, it’s not all about the GOP – regarding Democrats, Virginia has evolved into a pretty model version of the Obama coalition. High levels of education, large numbers of non-white voters, big numbers in the urban areas. At this point, it’s about 45% registered Dem, 32% registered Rep (the rest are “independents” – yeah right! – but still).

    I wouldn’t say it’s turning blue, either. It’s just blue, period, at this point. Northam beat Lyin’ Ed Gillespie by 9 points and he was as superficially palatable as the GOP has nominated, or is likely to nominate, in a long while. Kaine needs to run a good campaign, true, but he is pretty popular. I’d love to see him get in front of a camera or eight today though and tell Stewart to knock off his violent rhetoric, that’s for sure.

  46. 46.

    geg6

    @eemom:

    We had a freshman orientation yesterday with 25 new students. Six of them were named Nicholas. Confusion reigned.

  47. 47.

    Kay

    @Mandalay:

    Soooooo…..when they go low we go high?…

    It doesn’t have to be such a narrow choice. Define “go high” first. If your definition of “go high” is adopting some kind of subservient crouch then that’s your definition, not Michelle Obama’s.

    You’re buying into their definition of success and strength where this ridiculous grown man threatening to kick someone’s teeth in is “strong”. You’re doing that despite specific examples of “go high” where the candidate who wasn’t a mean-spirited, racist asshole won- like this one:

    Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, won a decisive victory in the race for governor of Virginia, defeating his Republican rival, Ed Gillespie, on Tuesday.

    If “strong” means “make loud threats to hurt people” then “go high” is weak, I guess, because Kaine won’t be assaulting his opponent. Is that what it means? Why do you accept their definitions?

  48. 48.

    Chyron HR

    @Mandalay:

    Yeah, dude, the destruction of American society at the hands of the resurgent Nazi party is directly attributable to a motivational poster platitude that someone who holds no elected office or formal party leadership position said in a speech once. Well done.

  49. 49.

    Joyce H

    @Jeffro:

    regarding Democrats, Virginia has evolved into a pretty model version of the Obama coalition. High levels of education, large numbers of non-white voters, big numbers in the urban areas. At this point, it’s about 45% registered Dem, 32% registered Rep (the rest are “independents” – yeah right! – but still).

    One thing I’m enjoying seeing is Virginia Democrats not afraid to run as Democrats. I’d gotten so tired of having to vote for the guy who posed with his shootin arn, talking about his veneration for the Second Amendment, but hey, he was the Democrat in the race.

    My Congressional District is ruby red, we only seem to lose Republican incumbents when they die. But this year, there were three Democrats running for the chance try to unseat the current guy. I voted for the woman, because someone put a door-knocker on my door for her, so she’s already got a ground game, and because the flyer I got in the mail from her said, “If you need thirty bullets to shoot a deer, you need to go fishing!” And she won the primary, yay!

    (Vangie Williams – I haven’t seen anything in the national coverage about her, since they seem to be concentrating on the flippable districts and don’t consider the 1st to be one of them. But you never know…)

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @Mandalay:

    In order to take Michelle Obama’s advice and come from a position of strength you have to actually believe NOT being a mean-spirited, racist asshole is better.

    Do we believe that or not? Because if you do believe it then there’s really no choice at all- kicking teeth in isn’t one of your options. They’re not pretending not to be racist violent assholes in order to “go high”. They’re actually higher.

  51. 51.

    Sherparick

    @Mandalay: Stewart has been the White Identity political leaders in this state since early Oughts when he was a Supervisor of Prince Williams county, then filling in as an outer suburb of DC. It was the time of the housing boom & building those houses were thousands of day laborers from Mexico & Central America. The folks moving into these homes, which they must have believe had been built by magic, were spooked by these guys waiting to get picked up at convenience stores & speaking Spanish. Ol’Cory saw an opening & promptly began blaming every social problem in the county on the dark Spanish people building the houses. And when the Bust in housing came that was their fault to. But for the FNYT that just means he is a colorful conservative firebrand & a good story.

  52. 52.

    Uncle Jeffy

    @burnspbesq: Now let’s see if the six Roman Catholic members of the Supreme Court wIll get the chance to say anything about this.

  55. 55.

    CliosFanBoy

    I’ve been talking with a buddy who is one of the (now retired) powers-that-be in Arlington. He says Kaine learned from Mark Warner’s mistake in his last race. Warner took his re-election for granted and came within a percentage point of losing to republican Ed Gillespie. (Gillespie, no chin, no brain, no backbone). Kaine apparently will be running his race as if he’s behind in the polls and fighting to catch up. It’s time to bury Corey’s political career once and for all and a huge margin of defeat will (hopefully) do it…

    On a related note, the Arlington School Board voted to drop the Lee from Washington and Lee High School. This is a big deal here. W&L is the county’s first high school (out of 3, soon to be 4) and its alumni are very vocal. They’re like Texans. In the first 3 minutes after you meet them they’ll tell you they’re a W&L grad, no matter how long it’s been. (“That’s nice” I say, “I went to West Carrollton. Go Pirates!”) The other school grads will tell you if you ask, but like most folk, where they went to high school isn’t a big part of their identity after about age 19. Corey might get a few of the old white W&L grads motivated to vote, but not enough to make a difference…

  56. 56.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Joyce H: HEY I LIVE HERE TOO! Voted for Santana but thought they were all good and a damn sight different from the way Democrats were running when I moved down here a dozen years ago.

  57. 57.

    Steve in the ATL

    @CliosFanBoy: important point: the college is Washington and Lee University, abbreviated W&L. The high school is Washington-Lee High School, and has no connection with the college.

  59. 59.

    opiejeanne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: We lived in Anaheim for 8 years, two blocks from Karl Karcher’s house. He’s one of the guys who gave us John G. Schmitz as a State Senator and then a Congressman. He also gifted us with Bob Dornan, another Congressman. Karcher and a handful of other wealthy men were a political power in the OC for years.

  60. 60.

    boatboy_srq

    @Mnemosyne: Remember that making women bear those baybees and ensuring the kids stay with Mom is merely more slvt-shaming, damaging Moms career prospects and enforcing poverty in the immoral. Yanking the kids from detainees fits perfectly with that objective. “Look what you made me do!” FundiEvangelicals won’t be the least bothered until it’s one of their own kids that gets separated like that.

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