CT Blue

Every once in a while you read about one or more Republicans doing the right thing and you get sort of stunned. But then, if you look closer your faith in the party of fascism is fully restored. If they do something right, it will always be for all the wrong reasons.

Case in point, the Tennessee GOP just voted to remove a loathsome Trumpist carpetbagger from the primary ballot for a (presumably safe) open Congressional seat in Tennessee.

The Tennessee GOP voted Tuesday to remove former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus and others from the ballot.

The former State Department spokesperson and Fox News contributor thought she had an inside track on running for Congress by moving to Tennessee after her time in Trump’s White House and working for Mike Pompeo. Alas, it was not to be as Tennessee Republicans don’t take kindly to carpetbaggers and found some novel ways to keep her and a few others off their ballot.

Ortagus made local headlines in March when she scored a big ZERO in a talk radio quiz about the district she wanted to represent.

Sounds good, right? Well, as you would expect after remembering these are Republicans we’re talking about, it turns out that for once, the media’s shibboleth about both sides being equally bad, turns out to be absolutely true. You see, as one of the folks responsible for keeping her off the ballot explained, Trump does not really care about her, and what they’ve done was for the sake of preserving the GOP’s monopoly on bigotry of all forms:

One Tennessee Republican opined that the only reason Ortagus had gotten Trump’s endorsement was that she’s a Jew.

“I don’t think Trump cares one way or the other,” he said. “I think Jared Kushner — he’s Jewish, she’s Jewish — I think Jared will be upset. Ivanka will be upset. I don’t think Trump cares.”

The Tennessee Republican in question is one Fred Nicely. Nicely “is also the same guy who last week made the Hitler reference as a former homeless person who made good”.

Of course Ortagus is incensed that Nicely would be openly anti-Semitic in the case of a Trump supporter, though one has to wonder whether, if she gets into Congress, she will join the rest of the nutjobs and cast aspersions on the Democratic Congresswomen who are Muslims.

At all events, it’s good to see some disarray among the Republicans. There’s an old saw about revolutions eating their own, and maybe the table is being set already.