Former North Carolina congressman Bob Etheridge became one of the Democratic victims of the 2010 Republican tsunami when he narrowly lost to Renee Ellmers, a nurse. Etheridge helped end his political career when he attacked a student holding a camera who asked him a question on a street corner and the video went viral.
She accuses Ellmers of liberal positions on immigration and same-sex marriage and ends with none-too-subtle visual footage of Daly shooting a rifle while going “RINO hunting.” But the commercial’s devastating moment is a clip from a 2011 speech in which the congresswoman said in full:
“In Washington, we don’t have this idea of there are some who are conservative, and then there are others who are more conservative, and you know as a Republican you can be a RINO. None of that matters right now. We can’t keep judging how conservative we are. That is not what we need to be doing.”
Whatever Ellmers meant to say, saying that a Republican can be a Republican In Name Only is not a smart political move for a primary that will be dominated by conservatives.