The myth of the unwinnable GOP primary
The “anti-establishment takeover” is mostly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Too many candidates stopped trying to win the voters who doubt them.
Political people love to speculate about potential future races. Every once in a while, I hear somebody say that “so and so” would be an excellent general election candidate, but they’d never make it out of a Republican primary.
I touched on this topic in my latest newspaper column, about U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis. Basically, I note that ever since dropping his re-election bid, Tillis has been unusually blunt and candid in his criticisms of the Trump administration.
That raises the obvious question: Where has this been for the last decade? The conventional wisdom is that if Tillis had said things like this from the beginning, he’d have been run out of Congress on a rail.
I’m not so sure, and I asked readers to do a little thought experiment about how things would have gone. Read the column here, free with gift link: What if Thom Tillis was like this all along?
There’s only so much ground I can cover in 800 words, and there’s a ton left to say here. To bring the Tillis thread to a close, a few further observations.
Let’s say Tillis had kept up his re-election campaign. Almost certainly, he would have become the Republican nominee. The only scenario I could foresee where he wouldn’t is if Lara Trump had indeed mounted a primary challenge supported by her father-in-law, but even that is no guarantee. And I don’t think she would have anyway.
Defeating an incumbent U.S. senator in a primary is among the most difficult challenges in North Carolina politics, likely even more so than defeating an incumbent governor in a general.
The more likely scenario is that President Donald Trump would have endorsed Tillis after a bunch of drama in exchange for something like getting his Fed chair nominee approved. Then the primary would be more of a formality than a real question. I think we’re seeing that proved out by the current primary, where Michael Whatley appears to be winning handily over challengers Don Brown and Michele Morrow (who we’ll come back to in a bit). Whatley has a lot of the same problems that Tillis has with the base. Perhaps there will be a huge surprise in March, but at least by the polling Whatley seems to be handily ahead.
Backing up farther, let’s say Tillis had become this brand of outspoken maverick much earlier in his Senate career. I can’t think of a single scenario in which he loses a Republican primary. Who would have actually run against him and beaten him? Name me somebody. It’s much more likely that a challenge goes the way of John McCain in 2016 rather than Dick Lugar in 2012.
In that alternate universe, I think Tillis beats Cal Cunningham by a much wider margin in 2020 and heads into 2026 as an inevitability. Former Gov. Roy Cooper never enters the race.
The deeper question
Which brings me back to the statement posed at the beginning of this newsletter. There is absolutely the perception that the Republican electorate in North Carolina has permanently changed, and that candidates like Tillis cannot win.
Like I said, even Republicans believe this. And Democrats love it. Here’s what left-wing activist group Carolina Forward had to say about my column.
Indeed, that is the question: Has anti-establishmentism1 actually taken over Republican primaries in North Carolina?
My answer is no. It’s just a self-fulfilling prophesy, and I don’t even think it’s been actually put to the test.
First, let’s deal with the evidence against my view.
The easiest to dispatch is that of former Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. If ever there were a candidate treated as inevitable, it was him in 2024. The leaders of the NCGOP lined up behind him well in advance of the primary, and there was only a half-hearted campaign against him from then-State Treasurer Dale Folwell and businessman Bill Graham. At that point, it was easy to forget that four years earlier, Robinson had only won the lieutenant governor primary with 32.5% of the vote in an nine-way race.
The harder result to explain is the Michele Morrow upset win over then-incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt. But this race is also a much better illustration of what I’m talking about.
Regardless of how you feel about Morrow, you have to admit she ran a heck of a campaign in 2024. She relentlessly traveled the state and talked directly to the party organizations that overwhelmingly vote in these low-information, low-turnout elections. She had a clear message that captured the zeitgeist — skepticism of public education — and hit Truitt where she had a weakness. Truitt is an education expert who (rightly) believed she could get more done working within the system than bomb-throwing from the outside. This ultimately yields more lasting change, but it takes longer and it’s harder to explain.
Truitt had a real job and didn’t have as much time to spend campaigning as her opponent did. And she struggled to communicate her message in a way people could understand. That’s why she lost, and even then it was narrow.
More broadly, the point about it being a self-fulfilling prophesy that “establishment” candidates can win a Republican primary right now is this. They don’t want to do the hard work of winning over a skeptical portion of their base.
Either they feel like they can’t (a la Truitt), or they don’t want to take the time to do it (a la Tillis). They don’t want to “lower” themselves and speak confidently directly to the people. It’s hard and uncomfortable.
That’s the real reason why Tillis dropped his re-election bid, and why you won’t ever see him run in, say, a governor race. At this point, he understandably feels like he doesn’t have to prove himself to the grassroots voter base.
But in a lot of ways, that’s the beauty of our American system. If you want to win, you have to go out and speak directly to the voters. A pure airwaves campaign is no longer a guarantee.
The candidates who win are the ones willing to look voters in the eye and ask for their support.
At a premium
On the pod last week, I talked with both Republican candidates in the deep-blue 12th Congressional District of North Carolina.
Top spenders on social media last week
Question of the week
This word isn’t a perfect encapsulation of what I’m trying to say, but it’s the closest I can find. Note that I don’t call this “MAGA” here, though I did in my initial tweet. There’s certainly some overlap between MAGA and anti-establishmentism, but it’s not a perfect circle. The only real way to define MAGA is loyalty to Trump. It’s his movement and based on his singular personality. The movement has always been attractive to anti-establishment types, but Trump himself has backed establishment folks when it suits his purposes. See Whatley in 2026 and Tillis in 2020.
You’re right, absolutely true that Tillis was afraid to engage grassroots Republicans. The last state GOP Convention he spoke at was in 2018. My wife saw him as he entered the venue and said’ “Senator Tillis, please support our President.” Indeed, the first line in his speech was a defense of his support of Trump, a sign of his vulnerability 8 years ago. He has not come to a State Convention since. Of course, he was censured in 2023 for his compromises with Democrats on immigration and gun rights. Another censure was proposed at 2025 Convention for obstructing Trump, but no vote occurred. He saw the writing on the wall, was afraid or unable to defend himself, and dropped out of the race.
Same with Burr, another Senator who only showed his face every 6 years to ask for votes. He announced his retirement (at the young age of 65 for a Senator, LOL) just before his vote to impeach Trump, knowing the consequences. Sure enough he was immediately censured by the Executive Committee led by grassroots fury.
So, in these two examples, at least, we have not seen a primary contest between a weak vulnerable incumbent and a grassroots pick. And that’s the other side of the coin. It’s hard for grassroots to establish a bench to advance candidates to the big leagues—a Catch-22, you work your way up the system and only to become branded “establishment.” Ted Budd would be an exception and we do have up and coming grassroots favorites, but they are only in their first terms as U.S. Representatives.
A few quick thoughts on this well written post:
1) I was surprised to see you not mention Morrow’s relentless attack against critical race theory and social emotional learning, both of which were impossible for Truitt to defend. That message was what drove a stake in Truitt’s political future, methinks.
2) Your observation on “anti-establishment” Republicans vs. any predecessors are a natural progression form the Perot voters, TEA Party, and now MAGA. You may have missed what I suspect is their common denominator: America First. And THAT’S the message likely to survive beyond the Trump era.
3) And finally, Tillis. He showed absolute distain for that America First movement once, by assuring a Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce luncheon that he would make sure they have continued access to cheap immigrant labor. Not everyone in the audience was thrilled with such a Globalist perspective. Some of them loved our country more than their stock dividends.