Loaded language

Roger Stanton, who chairs the GOP in Union County, also apologized, saying he had posted those words in the heat of the moment, following a confrontation with protesters in Washington.

A week earlier, State Sen. Joyce Krawiec, a Republican from Kernersville, tweeted: “Message to crazies @ Women’s March — If brains were lard, you couldn’t grease a small skillet. You know who you are.”

Krawiec, a former vice chair of the state GOP, quickly apologized as well, saying that she, too, had succumbed to her baser instincts.

The same day, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey took a dig of his own at the Women’s March on Facebook. “In one day Trump got more fat women out walking than Michelle Obama did in 8 years.”

Causey apologized, saying (you guessed it) that he had let his impulses get the better of him.

And on Sunday, state Rep. Michael Speciale, a New Bern Republican, posted a video of conservative TV host Steven Crowder in drag at a women’s march in Texas. Crowder quipped that he had dressed as a woman because “no one questions, criticizes nor conducts security background checks on trannies.”

Noted Speciale: “What a joke that gathering was!” Only, he didn’t apologize.

To Krawiec’s credit, she did, over and over, posting a series of tweets expressing her regret. “Forgive me Please,” one said. “Twitter Lesson learned.”

Causey was similarly contrite in a written statement.

It’s only fair to accept the apologies at face value. And to acknowledge that Republicans have hardly cornered the market on foul language.

A “Saturday Night Live” writer recently was suspended after inexcusably tweeting that Donald Trump’s 10-year-old son, Barron, “will be this country’s first home-school shooter.”

But three of these are publicly elected officials. The fourth is a spokesman for his county party. All should know better.

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