Spreading rumors or sounding alarms?

by | Dec 14, 2016 | Editor's Blog, Politics | 16 comments

Yesterday, the Republican Party released a statement ridiculing the press for covering speculation that the legislature might pack the Supreme Court by adding two new seats during the special session that opened yesterday. NCGOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse blasted the media for falling “hook, line and sinker for a court expansion crisis that was speculated by Democrats, rumored by Democrats, and fed by Democrats.”

Woodhouse is right that there was a lot of speculation about packing the court, but he’s wrong about where it originated. It didn’t start with Democrats. No, it started with an article in the Carolina Journal, the conservative news outlet that serves as a mouthpiece for the John Locke Foundation and is funded by Art Pope.

Just two days after the election, He was comparing apples and oranges, but social media types have been claiming it as fact ever since.

The Carolina Journal claims their article was a response to a question from a reporter from one of the state’s largest newspapers. That may be true, but once the article is written, particularly since the publication has influence with the party in power, the rumor is live. That’s how the world of social media works today and how rumors go viral.

Given the GOP’s authoritarian nature and historical lack of respect for election results, Democrats and the press would have been irresponsible not to speculate about legislative action. After Democrats swept the Wake County Board of Commissioners seats in 2014, the legislature scrapped the districts and redrew them to make them more favorable to Republicans. In 2013, the GOP devised a broad voter suppression bill to make voting more difficult for people who disagree with their policies. The odds that the GOP would stack the court are at least as good as the odds that they won’t.

The Republican leadership could have put the rumors to bed by saying court packing was off the table. Instead, they’ve declined to give an answer, fueling speculation. Nobody can blame the press or the Democrats for believing that court packing was under discussion. Besides, Democrats have long ago learned that they’re better off prepared and sounding the alarm than getting blindsided the way they were when the GOP first took control in the winter and spring of 2013.

16 Comments

  1. Nortley

    The Republican party — proving once again that it is the most morally and intellectually bankrupt institution in America.

  2. Proud Progressive

    We now know what the Republican legislature has in mind with a new “special session” starting today. What they’re attempting to do to undercut the governor’s powers and the state supreme court’s powers is beyond the pale, even for this legislature.

    I and several neighbors and friends mobilized last night and this morning to go to the session today and tomorrow and every day it’s needed to protest. And to wage a campaign of repeated calls and emails to at least these two:

    Senate Pro Tempore Phil Berger
    919-733-5708
    House Speaker Tim Moore
    919-733-3451

    As well as other legislators over the course of this session.

    Sitting on our hands or doing nothing but complaining to ourselves will do nothing. Protests stand a much better chance of being effective. It may not stop this out of control legislature this time, but it may if vocal and persistent enough. And if it doesn’t stop them this time, it will if it continues.

    I encourage each of you to do the same. And spread the word to as many of your like-minded friends and neighbors as quickly as possible.

  3. Apply Liberally

    Well, as we now know, tonite the GOP proposed a bill not to pack the SC in their favor, but rather to do something even wose, i.e., control the number and timing of cases that can get by the Appeals Court to be heard by the SC.

  4. Neal F. Rattican

    And now we learn that we are to be treated to yet a 4th special session of the Legislature, the reasons for which the leadership deigns not to share with the taxpayers who must foot the bill. I suppose we’ll learn though, but only after the mischief is done. Reprehensible stuff, this. Hubris does not serve well.

  5. Josh Berkov

    I think they will find a way to change how the state board of elections is appointed. I think they would have tried to pack the Supreme Court too if the greater public hadn’t got wind of that idea.

    • Jay Ligon

      Is there a way to edit entries to this comment section?

  6. Robert Hodgman

    Seems to me Dallas Woodhouse is the front man for GOP dirty tricks and whining. While his comments above are funny that is the exception to the rule and once again it is done in a whiny way.

  7. Tom

    I would hope JT can spend some time – now relieved of concern about court expansion and who in the world could have believed that anyone would try that – now, he can spend some time on his basic grammatical challenges. He can start by learning, as many of us did in elementary school, that you do not modify a noun with a noun. Use an adjective, man!

    • JC Honeycutt

      On the positive side, JT’s spelling has improved dramatically in the last few days (although his punctuation is still bad, and he does not know the proper way to indicate titles of books). I’m guessing he learned how to use Spellcheck on his computer. Keep up the good work, JT! (not referring to your opinions, however).

    • Jay Ligon

      Is there a way to edit entries to this comment section?

  8. jt ham

    The reporter who you do not name started it by asking a comical question.

    The Statement you are writing about IS PUTTING THE RUMORS TO BED……along with the other rumors,

    We are not outlawing the color blue.

    We are not selling the naming right to the General Assembly to Pepsi, or the Governor’s Mansion to Lowes.

    We are not going to shut down the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as punishment for their crazy liberal faculty.

    We are not requiring High School students to read: The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater, Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, or The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek.

    We are not requiring all school meals to include, bacon, beef or other meat products.

    We are not going to make voter fraud a capital offense…yet.

    Is it true that Thomas Mills Beat his wife and killed his dog?…..Now that is how rumors get started, and regardless of truth or not, if it fits the democrat mainstream press agenda (and yours too) to move it forward, it will happen.

    • larry

      BULL!

    • JoeB

      Dude, I wouldn’t doubt the GOP would do any of those things.

    • Troy

      And while Dallas Woodhouse was busy dispelling those awful rumors and misrepresentations, we learn that the Republicans are using their time wisely to introduce almost two dozen bills. One aimed at usurping and limiting the power of the Governor. So essentially while he (and you) were busy denying, the legislature was doing everything but packing the court.

      move along boy, nothing to see here….

      Get yourself another bully pulpit.

    • Jay Ligon

      I am shocked, shocked to learn that you read de Tocqueville.

      • Troy

        Read it? Perhaps. Understood it? Highly dubious.

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