The party of pointing fingers

by | Mar 28, 2016 | 2016 Elections, Editor's Blog, LGBT Rights, NC Politics, Presidential race | 4 comments

Remember when the GOP was the party of personal responsibility? Not any more. Now, they’re the party of pointing fingers. They’re blaming everybody but themselves for the continuing bad press being heaped on their party.

After Republicans passed sweeping legislation that restricted counties and municipalities from providing protections for LGBT people, they received a swift and serious rebuke from the state’s largest private employers and newspapers from across North Carolina and the nation. The NBA is considering moving the 2017 All-Star game out of Charlotte and he NCAA is reconsidering holding regionals in the state.

The GOP response? It’s Charlotte’s fault. Seriously. Republicans stood on the floor of legislature demonizing transgender people as threats to their women and children (with resounding echoes of Jim Crow) and then passed a law that went way beyond the issue that brought the legislators to Raleigh in the first place and they’re blaming Charlotte.

They remind me of Wile E. Coyote. They saw a chance to put Democrats on the defensive. They had a narrow issue that affected a small, relatively powerless group of misunderstood citizens and they were going to force Democrats to defend letting grown men share bathrooms and locker rooms with little girls. Like Wile E. Coyote, they set the trap by calling the session. When the Democrats walked in, or out as was the case in the Senate, they pulled the lever. But instead of falling on the Democrats, the rock crushed them.

It’s not just in North Carolina, though. Conservative pundits who are otherwise reasonable are blaming the rise of Trump on Obama. That’s right. Obama did it. They’re so used to blaming the president for everything that goes wrong, Trump taking over their party must be his fault. And if not him, it’s the media’s fault.

To hear them tell it, Obama caused the hyper-polarization that alienated their base from mainstream America. The two biggest things Obama did to cause the polarization were being black and getting elected. He spent the first three years of his presidency naively trying negotiate with Republicans who were publicly stating that their primary goal was to make his presidency a failed one. Back then, there were endless comparisons of Obama as Charlie Brown and Republicans as Lucy holding the football.

The Republican strategy has long since failed. Once Obama finally realized the GOP was not going to let him kick the football, he quit playing their game. The GOP kept offering the football, though. The latest incident is the Supreme Court nomination. Obama, they reason, is being divisive by following the constitution and asking the Senate to confirm his nominee. The public isn’t buying it and the GOP, not Obama, will probably pay a price.

In reality, the Trump supporters are evolved Tea Partiers who Republicans courted and encouraged in the 2010 elections. They’ve also forced the resignation of John Boehner and left the Senate a dysfunctional body. If they can’t get their extremist demands met by the people they sent to Congress, they’ll support a demagogue who plays on the racist and xenophobic tendencies that the GOP has refused to condemn for the past 50 years.

Thanks, Obama.

4 Comments

  1. Ebrun

    A rather condescending smear to the average white resident of nonmetropolitan NC. These are the voters in the counties with small cities like Hickory, Asheboro, New Bern. Burlington, Concord, Jacksonville, Salisbury, Lenoir, Moorsville, Gastonia and Statesville and those with smaller towns like Wilkesboro, Jefferson, Mount Airy, Monroe, Benson, Marion, Smithfield, Kinston, Murphy and Hendersonville et al.

    With liberal attitudes like yours, it’s no wonder most voters in the state’s rural and exurban counties vote Republican.

  2. An Observer

    “In reality, the Trump supporters are evolved Tea Partiers who Republicans courted and encouraged in the 2010 elections.”

    For North Carolinians, they inhabit 50 plus counties in great numbers. Where textile mills sit abandoned and store front window cracks are held together by tape. Where a church, a fast food restaurant and a Dollar General are guaranteed. Where people blindly give to Republican politicians knowing full well they could never find Otto, North Carolina on a map or Cozumel on a globe. Where the government is their enemy and a black man in the White House is an even greater enemy. Where another black man; the “leader of the NCGOP”, is a complete unknown.

    Where people go to the polls assuming those they voted into office haven’t eliminated their sites with the attitude; “we’ll show ’em.”

  3. Sue

    What fools. I continue to think that they can’t do anything worse than the last nonsense and they surprise me.

  4. Randolph Voller

    Thomas,

    You have adeptly hit on a key problem the GOP now has within its ideological framework and its leaders who attempt to foment policy and/or govern.

    Unfortunately, there is certain group within their ranks who refuses to simply do the job they were tasked to do by the State and Federal constitution, while others preach local control, streamlining and deregulation unless the locals want to do something they disagree with such as banning fracking, creating ordinances for livable wages or expanding civil rights protections.

    At that point our NCGA behaves like a dysfunctional state planning board or worse an out of control homeowners association.

    Ironically, the GOP claims to be the “party of bidness” yet time and time again they have besmirched the brand of the Tar Heel State with overreaching legislation and decisions like HB 2 that invite uncomfortable rebukes and statements from Fortune 500 companies and entities such as the NBA and NCAA.

    Indeed, this is a case where the Governor dribbled it off his foot for a costly turnover, while his team in the legislature cheers the effort and blames the other team for their poor sportsmanship and execution.

    Thank you for once again citing in a reasoned piece how North Carolina and America has arrived at this strange political juncture in our history.

    Let’s hope this fall is the beginning of a hard rain that washes away these stains on our democratic fabric.

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