As Virginia voters go to the polls to pick their next governor, ex-CIA man and failed #NeverTrump presidential spoiler Evan “McMuffin” McMullin delivered a Twitter hot take accusing Republican Ed Gillespie of “white nationalism.”
Claiming Gillespie “peddles fear and white nationalism,” McMullin implicitly endorsed Democratic challenger Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, saying, “It’s better for VA and America that [Gillespie] not prevail.”
As McMullin alludes, Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman and George W. Bush staffer, hardly has the kind of hard-right reputation that would attract racism accusations from the mainstream left. For example, outrage came from across the political spectrum over a now-pulled TV spot from the far-left “Latino Victory Fund” depicting a Gillespie supporter trying to run down minority children in a Confederate flag bestrewn pickup truck.
But where the mainstream left dare not go, McMullin and his #NeverTrump supporters were eager to join radical leftists. McMullin endorsed the same logic the leaders of the Latino Victory Fund used to justify their ad, claiming the Gillespie campaign’s focus on illegal immigration fueled MS-13 crime is merely spreading “fear:”
In calling Ed Gillespie, a largely establishment-type Republican who has shown a modicum of warmth to the populist-nationalist right, a “peddler of white nationalism,” McMullin appears to have accelerated the flight of supporters who once considered him a viable member of the political right.
The Federalist contributor Bethany Mandel, for example, vented her frustration over McMullin’s attack on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/927907395233296384
https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/927908670469492741
National Review columnist Dan McLaughlin made a similar observation:
As did former American’s for Prosperity exec and American Commitment 501(c)(4) President Phil Kerpen:
McMullin’s 2016 presidential campaign was the brainchild of establishment GOP consultant and violent Trump foe “the” Rick Wilson. It attracted the endorsement of leading Republican globalists, right-leaning legacy media figures, and neoconservatives who felt left behind by Republican voters’ choice of Donald J. Trump, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, and anti-Trump conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch.
Despite the broad coalescence of this #NeverTrump coalition around McMullin, he received roughly one half of one percent of the national popular vote, coming in third in Utah, where we had hoped to spoil Trump’s chances at victory. Had McMullin pulled out an unlikely win in his home state, Trump still would have won the electoral college by a wide margin.
Along the way, however, McMullin did earn himself the now-cemented moniker “McMuffin” when the President toured Utah en route to roundly beating McMullin in a state pollsters once showed as a competitive race between the two men.
Immediately after his “white nationalist Gillespie” tweet, McMullin went right back to his more typical pattern of attacking the president over supposed links to “Moscow:”
Tuesday’s polls in Virginia close at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.
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