News-Record.com

Vernon Robinson seems to be having such a good time right now he can't stand himself.

The GOP challenger to Democrat Brad Miller in the 13th Congressional District, Robinson lobs one memorable stink bomb after another on the Miller campaign with clever commercials that play like bits from Dave Chapelle's show.

Among highlights from Robinson's meeting this week with the News & Record:

He took the GOP Congress to task for driving "fiscal reality into the ground."

He told us he missed the chance to have a side-by-side interview with Miller at the News & Record because he didn't get the message in time from his staff. "It was an administrative foul-up," he said of the Sept. 8 interview.

"I would have loved the chance to excel," Robinson said.

When asked why his ad campaign is so relentlessly nasty, he noted that Miller's last opponent, Republican Virginia Johnson of Greensboro, ran "googly-bear ads and was crushed." He added, in reference to Miller: "You have to give people a reason to fire him."

The country's leaky borders could be fixed lickety-split, he said, with the right military help. "We could secure the borders by midnight with 5,000 Marines and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)," he said.

He said the Bush administration "has punted" on enforcement and said he would "hammer employers hard" with fines and jail time on immigration violations.

He discussed his strategy to break the Democrats' stranglehold on the black vote. (A campaign mailer aimed at black voters attacks Miller for living in a predominantly white neighborhood and framing abortion as a form of genocide against black people.)

And he insisted that Howard Coble has endorsed him even though Coble's office doesn't quite call it that.

Coble's PAC has given Robinson's campaign $1,000, Coble's office confirmed, describing it as "support."

"Howard is solidly behind me," he said.

Robinson is a political junkie and, as distastefully over-the-top his riffs on "The Twilight Zone," "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Leave It To Beaver" in his ads have been, they are wicked and, well, inspired.

You could see him making cash hand over fist as a Rovelike strategist for someone someday. But I wouldn't bet on it. Robinson strikes you as someone who would only want to be a strategist for Vernon Robinson.