February 18, 2021/Media, Press

N&O Editorial: NC GOP Seek To “Unify Their Party By Splitting It,” Censure Shows “No Room” for Moderates in Modern GOP

After their unanimous vote to censure Senator Burr for his vote to impeach Donald Trump, the North Carolina Republican Party is visibly fracturing. An editorial from the News & Observer slammed the state party for “demanding blind loyalty” instead of accepting “diversity of thought” as other state parties have. The editorial declares a clear loser from the censure vote — and it’s not Senator Burr: “If anyone is hurting the North Carolina Republican Party, it isn’t Burr. It’s Whatley and other Republican leaders. They are demanding blind loyalty to Trump at the expense of broadening the party’s appeal and winning elections.” 

Michael Gerhardt, a UNC School of Law professor and counsel to the presiding officer of the impeachment trial said of Burr: “Being censured by a party he has served well for decades says more about those censuring him than it does him.”

As voters are already leaving the party in droves in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, they are making it clear that there is “no room for those who think it’s time to move on from the deeply unpopular and divisive former president.” 

Their political calculation may cost them.

Read the full editorial

 

###