It will still be 10 years before Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-NC, is eligible even to consider running for president.
The 25-year-old congressman must wait until at least the 2032 election should he wish to become the youngest chief executive in US history.
But he already has well-heeled leftists quivering in their boots.
His deranged political opponents have pounced at every opportunity to attack Cawthorn, who is crippled as the result of a car accident in his teens.
Those efforts have included dredging up former school acquaintances to accuse him of #MeToo-style sexual impropriety during his days at the Christian-based Patrick Henry College, as well as claiming Cawthorn embellished the circumstances of his fateful, life-altering crash.
Following Cawthorn’s speech at last year’s Republican National Convention, race-hustling PBS hack Yamiche Alcindor even tried to weaponize Cawthorn’s disability against him in a clumsy effort to subvert his patriotism.
Apparently you have something against disabled people. You are classless!
— Mark (@Mark_Kalet) August 27, 2020
Despite the attacks, Cawthorn has persevered with a clarity of vision beyond his years and a determination that more than compensates for his physical limitations.
He has become a close ally of former president Donald Trump, who noted his dashing, Tom-Brady-like appearance during a fundraising speech Saturday in Greensville, NC.
Trump introduced Cawthorn as “somebody I’ve gotten to know very well—and he’s a handsome sucker. … If I had a face like him I would’ve been president 20 years earlier.”
The compliment, however, appeared to have put an even bigger target on Cawthorn’s back as nervous, left-wing operatives wholeheartedly concurred with Trump’s assessment.
According to USA Today, the federal super-PAC “Fire Madison Cawthorn” launched on Monday, fronted by Cawthorn’s embittered 2020 opponent, Moe Davis, and failed North Carolina Senate candidate David Wheeler.
It is unclear whether either intends to challenge Cawthorn in the 2022 election.
While little is known yet about their operation, Wheeler claimed already to have received a $5,000 donation. And he said he was planning to speak with “several other five- and six-figure potential donors” in coming months.
Wheeler also said the PAC planned to purchase anti-Cawthorn TV, radio and billboard ads this fall, “pointing out some of the ludicrous things that he does and says,” which included missing votes and “not reaching across the aisle to work with any Democrats.”
A press release announcing the new super-PAC called Cawthorn “callous and childlike,” and it accused him of being a “party boy” who had showed off “more skin than was appropriate” while on vacation in Dubai.
Davis—who quickly went negative in the contentious 2020 campaign, launching spurious innuendo in an attempt to link Cawthorn to neo-Nazis, among other things—appeared to be having a hard time accepting defeat.
“Since his first day in Congress, Madison Cawthorn has been a threat to our democracy,” Davis said, before parroting the talking points of House Democrats who would have been his colleagues had he succeeded in taking down the conservative wunderkind.
“First, he peddled Trump’s big lie about the election being stolen,” claimed Davis.
Ironically, given his past violations of Godwin’s law to attack Cawthorn on the campaign trail, the “big lie” that Davis made reference to is a concept and term ripped directly from the pages of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
“Then he betrayed our country and helped incite the violent attack on our Capitol and our Constitution,” Davis continued.
However, the only violence-related casualty of the mostly peaceful Jan. 6 uprising was Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Trump demonstrator who was shot and killed by Capitol Police—with no warning—while climbing through a broken window into the House Speaker’s Lobby.
Like Babbitt, Davis also served in the Air Force—including a stint during the George W. Bush administration as chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay.
But since resigning his post there, he has made his name by undermining US military operations and turning his back on fellow veterans.
The bombastic, hotheaded leftist tried to use his military service as a political bludgeon during the campaign, but he became indignant when Cawthorn supporters flipped the script on him.
I got berated for shaming the distinguished military Veteran @CawthornforNC.
Closest Cawthorn got to the military was lying about the Naval Academy … he said his injuries kept him from attending when in fact they rejected him prior to his spring break car wreck.@votevets pic.twitter.com/44kz7zwXw2
— Moe Davis (@ColMorrisDavis) January 9, 2021
Ultimately, Davis’s spiteful and unhinged rhetoric may have been a political gift, allowing Cawthorn to contrast it with his more affable temperament.
In a vicious Sept. 11 attack via Twitter, Davis appeared to threaten Republicans with violence and to mock Cawthorn’s disability, all in one fell swoop.
“Screw they go low, we go high bullsh*t,” he tweeted.
“When NC GOP extremists go low, we stomp their scrawny pasty necks with our heels and once you hear the sound of a crisp snap you grind your heel hard and twist it slowly side to side for good measure,” Davis continued. “He needs to know who whupped his ass.”
Responding to Davis’s most recent attacks—and the formation of a super-PAC to solicit funding for the effort—Cawthorn spokesman Micah Bock dismissed it as a blatantly desperate bid to neutralize the rising star.
“Rep. Cawthorn serves as a champion of free expression, and individual liberty, so it comes as no surprise, that embittered liberal activists have been weaponized by the Democrat machine in Washington in an effort to silence his voice,” Bock told USA Today.
“Congressman Cawthorn continues to fight for the values of Western North Carolina on the national stage, and he is honored to have the support of so many hard working North Carolinians in NC-11,” Bock added.
Although his political assailants accused Cawthorn of failing to sponsor any legislation in the Democrat-controlled House, evidence showed that he has sponsored 11 bills in his first six months.
Among them was the Veterans Fellowship Act, which promised to help secure training and long-term job prospects for unemployed veterans like his ex-campaign rival, Col. Davis.
“Rep. Cawthorn continues to place the interests of his constituents over the partisan politicking of liberal special interest groups,” Bock said.
