My man Chuck Todd looked a little puzzled this morning. His guest was Thom Tillis, the speaker of the House in the newly insane state of North Carolina, which became newly insane in large part because of what went on in the Houseunder Thom Tillis's speakership. First, my man Chuck asked Tillis about a video that has emerged of Tillis's addressing a town hall meeting in 2011. In the video, Tillis talks about using a "divide and conquer" strategy on the people in North Carolina who depend on the various forms of government assistance. In the video, Tillis hits a wingnut grand slam. He stokes the class warfare with a rather obvious racial dogwhistle while cautioning his audience that there might be a political backlash if they deploy his strategy too obviously. This is what Willard Romney's "47 percent" video would have sounded like, had Romney decided to perform it as Snidely Whiplash.

So my man Chuck asked Tillis about the video, and about the possible political downside of sounding as though you want to strap poor people to a table saw. In response, Tillis proceeded to...engage the strategy. He talked about the "woman with cerebral palsy" again. He accused various, unidentified welfare cheats -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- for endangering the woman with cerebral palsy's attempts to get the help she so desperately needs. He talked about how his real concern was for the deserving poor, whom he declined to identify. It was a bravura performance of the act of doubling down.

My man Chuck then moved on to ask Tillis whether or not he would favor the Medicaid expansion available under the Affordable Care Act that North Carolina thus far has declined. Tillis talked about how we have to solve the "waste, fraud, and abuse" in the Medicaid system before we consider expanding it. My man Chuck proceeded on to the issue of increasing the minimum wage. Tillis initially parried the question by arguing that the issue should be left to the states, questioning whether someone in the hills of North Carolina should be subject to the same minimum wage law as is someone "who lives in a house in Boston." (Anybody want to guess what that person in the hills would be making if the minimum wage were left to the tender mercies of the legislature in which Thom Tillis is a leader? Can you give me change for a turnip?) Chuck then pressed him. Tillis is, after all, the speaker of the House in North Carolina. What should the minimum wage be in North Carolina? Tillis responded, at length, if not entirely coherently, that his real aim was to create "good jobs," not minimum wage jobs. He never really answered the question. Chuck ended the interview, puzzled.

It was a particularly revelatory bit of television, and it is one that you should keep in mind because, today, you are going to hear a great deal about how the fact that Tillis won the Republican primary last night was a victory for the Republican "establishment," because Tillis defeated a genuine whackaloon named Greg Brannon, who had been backed by Tea Party Republicans and by dudebro superstar Senator Aqua Buddha of Kentucky. This interpretation of the results depends vitally on two propositions that are undermined by the very election that is supposed to validate them.

Point The First: As regards the issues, there is no Republican "Establishment" any more. This is because the notion of a Republican Establishment requires that there be at least an occasional flirtation with moderation and there are no Republican moderates any more. (It also requires that there be at least an occasional flirtation with reality, but I don't expect miracles here.) Tillis is a perfect example. Not only has he presided over a legislative body that is extreme in the legislation it passes, but Tillis himself has signed aboard the "personhood" crusade on reproductive rights, and he has resolutely stood in opposition to marriage equality. The difference between Tillis and Brannon, in terms of what their campaigns say about what they'd do if they were elected, is solely based on the theory that Brannon was so far off the wall that Tillis could be positioned by the media as being a moderate. The goalposts, by now, probably can be found on Mars.

Point The Second: As regards the politics, there is no Republican party any more. There is merely a universe of powerful conservative institutions, each of them with their independent sources of income and power, and none of them under the effective control of the formal party apparatus. They operate on their own imperatives, and they support whoever they want to support, regardless of what Mitch McConnell or obvious anagram Reince Priebus thinks about what they're doing. Because, within the party, the gamut of positions on most issues runs from A to A, these independent institutions can simply line up behind the candidate whom they feel is more electable, since they can rest easily knowing that their interests are covered by whomever is elected. Brannon was more easily cast as a crackpot, so those institutions decided that Tillis could be elected. Nothing about him is remotely risky.

As should be obvious from the video, Tillis is as blackhearted a reactionary as one currently expects a champion of modern conservatism to be. He will be central to the attempt to recreate the newly insane state legislature of the newly insane state of North Carolina on a national basis. This should puzzle no one. The long game of corporatized, radically extreme Republican politics is coming down to the final moves. Nothing -- and certainly not the nomination of "Establishment" hero Thom Tillis -- can stop that now.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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