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Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day: Thom Tillis- 2023 Update [1]

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Date: 2023-05-11

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who was questioning the science of... why we make restaurant workers wash their hands...

On this date in both 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled the U.S. Senator from North Carolina, Thom Tillis, who first got his Senate seat back in the 2014 elections. Prior to heading to Washington, D.C., Tillis served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2007-2014. Now, we don’t want to just focus on Tillis’ career in our nation’s capital in this profile, and point out that North Carolina’s state government not-coincidentally went full-on Looney Tunes right around the point where the Tea Party began influencing the GOP and putting partisan tools like Tillis into seats of power.



Tillis was allowed to run for re-election for his spot in the state legislature unopposed in 2008, 2010, and 2012. And from his role as House Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, the entire state legislature got gerrymandered into a false majority, and North Carolina Republicans started passing laws like stricter Voter ID bills (while Tillis admitted there was not statistical evidence of fraud to justify the need for it) and votes to cut the number of early voting days (aimed at suppressing the vote and maintaining that false majority further that were all turned away by appeals courts), an amendment to the state Constitution to ban same sex marriage (and he hasn’t changed his position on same sex marriage even after the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling), the notorious “Motorcycle Safety Abortion Bill” (where upon a bill requiring helmets for motorcyclists was amended to become one of the harshest anti-choice measures in all the country).



Perhaps his most shocking moment as a state legislator was in 2011, when he gave his thoughts on using a “divide and conquer” strategy to combat people who receive government assistance:

So it will come as little surprise that a guy who rode to office by fearmongering about a deadly disease like Ebolavirus and will scrutinize even science is simple as “food service workers should wash their hands”, while Tillis was up for re-election in 2020, he was mostly mum about the god-awful response the Trump administration had to the spread of COVID-19. Instead, at a town hall in September of 2020, Senator Tillis threw any credibility he might have had out of the window by trying to make excuses for that abysmal response by becoming a “death total truther” and talking about conspiracy theories being spread by Qanon supporters that the “real mortality rate from Covid-19” was far lower because deaths from "things like heart attacks, and slip-and-falls and things like that" were being attributed to Covid-19. (Experts have said if anything, the numbers were too LOW.) Tillis went on to advocate for “herd immunity”, and throw cold water on the advisement of medical experts to continue social distancing until the populace was vaccinated.

And yet, AND YET… he was re-elected in 2020, again failing to cross the 50% threshold, getting just 48.7% this time out against Cal Cunningham in a highly contested race Since returning to the Senate, Sen. Tillis has voted against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, refusing to hold him accountable for a violent coup attempt on the Capitol that resulted in five deaths and very nearly could have caused the deaths of elected officials, voted against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 because he would rather do nothing to help Americans during a pandemic, against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and has voted against the majority of President Biden’s Cabinet nominations. Barring any scandals forcing his resignation, Thom Tillis will remaiin in office until 2026.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/11/2168877/-Fanatical-Republican-Extremist-of-the-Day-Thom-Tillis-2023-Update

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