Politico, Michael Kruse, 4/22/2022
Photographs obtained by POLITICO appear to show Madison Cawthorn, the embattled Republican congressman from North Carolina who recently accused his GOP colleagues of inviting him to orgies, wearing lingerie in what appears to be a party setting.
Cawthorn, 26, was raised in a conservative Baptist community in Henderson County, North Carolina, and has staked his political persona on arch-traditional Christian principles and the insistence of the importance of a kind of hypermasculinity. His comments about “the sexual perversion” in Washington made on a podcast, which he later admitted were exaggerated, drew the public disapproval and disavowal of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as well as other Republican leaders including those in his North Carolina congressional caucus.
The revelation of the two photos is the latest in a series of unflattering headlines for the freshman member of Congress in the run-up to the primary in his first re-election bid. The primary in North Carolina is May 17. Cawthorn has seven Republican opponents who see him as vulnerable.
Once again, Madison becomes the gift that keeps giving Republicans headaches. We know that Cawthorn’s hypermasculinity, wrapped in the cloth of Republican Jesus, has been one of his shining features for the White Evangelical communities of Western North Carolina and beyond.
Revelations about his behavior, from speeding, driving with a revoked driver’s license, and more, are starting to take its toll on his approval. Maybe something as abhorrent as dressing in lingerie while partying with happy women will be the final straw. But then again, maybe not.
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