In a speech away from NC, Mark Robinson is his old combative self | Opinion

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has been a little less pugilistic since officially launching his 2024 bid for governor in April. But in a speech away from North Carolina on Friday, Robinson showed a lot of his old fire.

His appearance at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. was one of his first major appearances as a candidate, and it offered an early glimpse of what he might be like on the campaign trail.

Robinson first delivered a ringing endorsement of Donald Trump onstage, a move that quickly made national headlines. He insisted the country is “at war” and needs a president who will put America first — unlike Joe Biden, who he said “puts ice cream first.”

It wasn’t long before Robinson began speaking about his own race, however.

Robinson shared his desire to make North Carolina more like ruby-red Texas and even Florida, which he claimed are thriving compared to Democratic-led states that are “falling apart.” But he notably avoided some of the more hateful rhetoric that has drawn negative attention in the past. He didn’t mention the issue of abortion, even though Saturday marks one year since the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

But that didn’t make his speech any less impassioned. Robinson addressed hot-button issues like parental rights in education and “pornography” in public schools, and he did still mention transgender people, a community that he has referred to as “filth” in the past.

“I believe there’s only two genders,” Robinson said. “And boys shouldn’t be running against girls at the track meet, swimming against girls in the swim meet, wrestling against girls in the wrestling meet.”

Throughout much of his speech, Robinson seemed bothered by those who invoke his history of bigotry to argue he shouldn’t be governor. He balked at the assertion that he is too extreme to win in a purple state like North Carolina, directly addressing the “naysayers” who say he is “too far right” or “crazy.”

“The fact of the matter is I’m not crazy,” Robinson told the crowd. “Because normal — ordinary — looks crazy to the insane. And what we’re facing is insane.”

It still seems as though Robinson is trying to figure out how to position himself in one of the most competitive gubernatorial races in the country. He’s adopted a softer tone in some of his more recent appearances — in a rebuttal to Gov. Roy Cooper’s State of the State address in March, Robinson lamented how “thoughtful discussion” has been replaced by “heated rhetoric.”

On Friday, though, his speech was as heated as ever. And near the end of it, he seemed to embrace the “crazy” label, delivering a diatribe that was met with raucous cheers from the conservative evangelical audience.

“Go ahead. Call me crazy if you want. Guess who I’m crazy like?” Robinson said. “Crazy like that first guy in this nation who stood up and said, ‘Why can’t America be free? Why do we have to be subjects of the British?’”

“Crazy” isn’t really the best word to describe Mark Robinson, but “extreme” certainly is. Anger is a political strategy that has worked for him so far, despite how much it embarrasses North Carolina. And it seems like he might just be OK with that.