Honestly, folks

by | Sep 7, 2016 | 2016 Elections, Editor's Blog, NC Politics, NCGov | 5 comments

New York Time’s columnist Paul Krugman worries that Hillary Clinton is going to get “Gored.” In the 2000 election, Al Gore was defeated by innuendo and perceptions rather than facts. Voters believed that he was less than sincere while George Bush was the type of guy with whom you would want to sit down and have a beer. Gore lost and Bush led us into a war based on inaccurate information and then brought the economy crashing down.

This year, Hillary Clinton is surrounded by similar allegations with no real accusations except a vague notion that she’s less than honest. Clinton’s instinct to obscure information has certainly contributed to this perception, but Republicans nominated a man who will say anything to get press. Donald Trump is not only a liar, he’s got a history of real scandals going back almost 50 years.

But if trust and honesty is the standard by which Republicans will judge candidates, then they certainly will have to reject North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory. McCrory has a history of unnecessary lies and unscrupulous relationships going back to the day he took office. If he hadn’t finally been reeled in by his handlers, he would still be spouting off nonsense like he did in his early, free-wheeling press encounters.

Remember when McCrory claimed that he went to Moral Monday rallies but he really didn’t? Or how about the time he told a group of teachers that he couldn’t meet with them because he was in a meeting when in reality he was throwing a baseball behind the Capitol? Or the time he blamed his predecessor for a budget that she had actually vetoed?

And the lies go on. He hired two unqualified campaign staffers at high salaries and claimed they beat out other applicants even though there were no applicants. He blamed Obama for cutting unemployment benefits when he, himself, signed the bill into law. When it came to light that he was in a meeting with a big donor who complained that he was about lose a government contract, McCrory claimed he didn’t hear the comment. Most memorably, he clearly said in a debate that he would do nothing to further restrict abortions in North Carolina but did just that once he got into office.

Now, McCrory’s got an ad up saying Democrats want to let boys into the girls’ locker room in schools. That’s just false. He’s playing on people’s fears and lying to do it.

If Republicans have doubts about Clinton’s honesty and say that’s a reason to disqualify her, then they certainly should be abandoning Pat McCrory. McCrory only stopped lying when he stopped talking to the press except in tightly controlled environments.

5 Comments

  1. Barbara Kirby

    McCrory hasn’t stopped lying. Check out any of his current television ads–especially the one about teacher pay

  2. MyTurnNC

    Al Gore did not lose because he wasn’t trusted, and George W. Bush didn’t win because he might be fun to have a beer with.
    Bush won because a partisan majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took over a state run election and declared Bush the winner.

  3. Jay Ligon

    Sullying Hillary Clinton’s reputation has been a right-wing project that dates back to the early 1990s when she was in charge of creating national health insurance. Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson bragged that the Republicans battered and bruised the Clintons’ reputations so that national health insurance would be set aside while they dealt with the various scandals that were created out of whole cloth. “Things got out of hand,” he admitted after he retired.

    Scion of the Mellon fortune and the right-wing conspiracist, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife spent lavishly on creating a false impression of Hillary Clinton in the pages of his scurrilous and mendacious periodical called The American Spectator. He commissioned writer David Brock to write a book on Mrs. Clinton after Brock’s smear of Anita Hill was published. Brock was a professional journalistic assassin for the right, but he couldn’t find enough raw meat to make “The Seduction of Hillary Rodham” the salacious hit piece the right had wanted.

    There has been a cottage industry engaged in smearing and defaming Mrs. Clinton for the past 25 years. The famous case of Citizens United v. F.E.C., a case which opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate campaign contributions, was brought before the Supreme Court to litigate “Hillary: The Movie.” The movie was a nasty, hate-filled excoriation of the Hillary Clinton, which Citizens United wanted to run on Direct TV in 2007. One reviewer summed up the film: “I have no particular liking of Hillary Clinton but this movie is an extremely biased, cynical and politically motivated assassination of her character.” The filmmakers chose to interview only her enemies. How appropriate that a ruling on such a despicable piece of trash would usher in vast amounts of money to be used to create thousands of hours of lies and despicable trash for home use at meal times in the evening.

    An equally vile film from felon (convicted of campaign law violations) Dinesh D”Souza is available this year for those to can’t get enough lies and hate, called “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party ” D’Souza produced “Obama’s America” for the consumption of people who could be persuaded that the world would end after Obama’s presidency. That the world has not ended does not the deter D’Souza from predicting a similar fate for America if Hillary is elected.

    Bookshelves are filled with books about Hillary which depict her as a woman waging war on women, a greedy hump enriching herself by false pretenses, a power-hungry Machiavellian and so forth. For those who wish to drink their fill of right-wing venom, there is plenty.

    In addition to the publishing industry’s disinformation bonanza, there are the years of hearings and investigations into every nook and cranny of their lives – Vince Foster, Whitewater, Travelgate, Troopergate, Benghazi and so much more. The unquenchable thirst for new scandals has fueled the never-ending campaign against the Clintons. How unfortunate that Hillary’s life has become the hobby of idle billionaires. They finance the lies and fables from their secret lairs. Poltroons taking pot shots at public figures and hiding behind their wealth and privilege.

    At this time, I think we are waiting for 30 emails to be released. I hope there will be a really excellent chicken pot pie recipe found under the millions of documents which would make the hundreds of millions of dollars worth effort.

    A hate campaign running three decades, filling the air waves, books and films should have created a lot of negative impressions. How she has survived the onslaught is the incredible untold story.

  4. Norma Munn

    Nice try, but don’t hold your breath waiting for logic of this sort from the GOP. Nor the press generally when it comes to Clinton and Trump. Most show a clear double standard, and Krugman is quite right to be worried.

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