For six years, the 2010 midterm sweep has looked like the NCGOP’s seminal moment of success. It left them with full control of the legislature for the first time in a century, and gave them a chance to revolutionize state government. But now that thunderous victory is echoing back at a pitch the leadership does not want to hear.
In the wake of a demoralizing 2008 cycle, Paul Stam, Tom Fetzer, and Phil Berger resolved to retake state politics. The men went about it aggressively. They recruited candidates in every district, many of whom won surprising victories in long-Democratic seats. Leadership had the votes to pass bill after bill.
GOP recruiters searched for willing candidates with backgrounds in business. This sounded good enough, but many of the candidates were greenhorns motivated to enter politics by rage at liberalism. At first this merely caused annoyances, as when new legislators introduced nonsense bills that went nowhere. But that wasn’t the end of the story.
Fetzer’s indiscriminate recruiting practices are coming back to haunt them. Many of the people they brought into the legislature turn out not to be leaders in the making, but fervid, undisciplined ideologues. They behave more like conservative listserve participants. And such people have no interest in caving to the “sports and entertainment elite” no matter how much damage HB2 causes.
So they’re stuck in another Icarus Moment. Republican leaders overestimated how much they could discipline their own members. It took a while, but the 2010 triumph sowed the seeds of years of political trouble.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
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