Talk about a politician doing an about face. And another about face. And a third about face.

Six years ago when she was elected to Congress, Renee Ellmers ran as an Outsider. But after she arrived in Washington, wooed by the Establishment, made a fuss over by House Speaker John Boehner, she had a change of heart. And became an Insider. She rolled along more or less fitfully for six years, loyally voting with the Establishment, then the unexpected happened and she found herself in a tough Special Election (on June 7) in a year when Washington Insiders are about popular with Primary voters as the plague.

In a fix, needing to shed herself of her Insider label, the day of North Carolina’s Presidential Primary she tweeted, I voted for Donald Trump – then shot out an email saying “ignore the negativity coming from the Washington Establishment and get behind Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.”

It was too cute by half and like a lot of cute ideas it backfired.

A week earlier at the Chatham County Republican Convention, to hold a straw poll, they’d handed every Republican a pebble and told them to drop it in the bucket of the candidate for President they were voting for – and a reporter had clicked a photo of Congresswoman Ellmers, cradling her pebble in her hand, then tweeted, ‘She dropped the pebble in John Kasich’s bucket.’

After she voted for Kasich, Congresswoman Ellmers explained to the reporter, He sounds the most mature.

A week later, when the Congresswoman decided it was time to turn herself back into an Outsider, the reporter simply reposted the photograph and tweeted, Last week she told me she was for Kasich – and Congresswoman Ellmers’ third about face fizzled.