The 2016 election cycle is shaping up to be a rough one for the GOP, especially in North Carolina. In all likelihood, the Republicans will nominate an unelectable candidate for president, and here in the Old North State, they’re blowing up their state party. After choosing their first African-American Chairman last year, they’re now trying to oust him in the middle of a cycle when they’re also trying to re-elect a governor and U. S. Senator. It doesn’t bode well for the Party That Once Was Lincoln’s.
The rift in North Carolina mirrors what’s happening nationally. Grassroots Republicans made up of Tea Partiers and reactionary Trump supporters are demanding a greater voice and influence, supporting policies and tactics that have little chance of electoral success. The establishment is trying to hold onto their party and keep it close to the mainstream. They’re losing. Candidates like Donald Trump have little ideological orthodoxy while others like Ted Cruz are driving off the right side of the earth.
In North Carolina, Chair Hasan Harnett has been battling the establishment since he took over last year. Last week, Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse, who was hired by the Central Committee instead of Harnett, apparently shut down the Chairman’s email account. Harnett accused Woodhouse of racism. Woodhouse, in turn, declared that it was all a big misunderstanding and that he and Harnett have a great working relationship.
Well, that doesn’t ring true. This weekend, the Central Committee, Woodhouse’s masters, censured Harnett and passed a resolution of no confidence. The grassroots people will almost surely respond. If nothing else, the NCGOP convention in May should be fun to watch.
Really, though, the forces ripping the GOP apart today are the same ones that caused similar turmoil in the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The party had an internal fight between the forces of reaction represented by George Wallace and the New Dealers represented by almost everyone else. Republicans invited the reactionary wing of the Democratic Party into the GOP and now they’ve taken over.
For years, the GOP establishment paid lip service to the racism, religious zealotry, and homophobia of the reactionaries but kept them pretty much at bay. Now, they’re driving the agenda. Combined with their Congressional obstructionism, the party could be in for a long night next November.
The lesson of this year is that both parties should reject those who want to discriminate against their fellow Americans. Wooing them with vague promises that can’t be kept might work for awhile, but eventually that strategy leads to division and loss. Democrats found that out in 1968 and 1972. Republicans are about to find it out this year.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Sounds to me like the GOP is still the party of Dis-Honest Abe 😉
If one wants to revisit the entire history of the US. government’s military actions – post American revolution, both domestic and foreign, using historical documents as opposed to recorded history textbooks, one will find that military history to be not only quite shocking to the conscience, but totally at odds with regards to the light in which the US. military’s actions have been cast. What is missing from the video above are the causes that forced Lincoln’s hand in difficult circumstances – though that is not an excuse for the actions he took; however, war under any pretext is a deplorable act.
Interesting times for NC Repubs when Dallas Woodhouse is considered part of the establishment wing.
I wish commentators would stop affiliating the Republicans with the honored name of our 16th President. The Republican Party should be known as “the party that became Goldwater’s party, added crazed, racist Dixiecrats and whatever was left of the copperhead Democrats, partially metastasized into the “Tea Party,” and (now drunk and roofied) is veering all over the median and into the ditch.” It’s not as convenient an association as telegraphing that it is/was the party of our 16th President, but it has the benefit of being more accurate.
I love the propaganda believing ignorant. If the tea party was racists they would not be trying to keep Harnett in his position. Maybe you should look at your own candidate, Hillary. Her idol, Sanger had only one goal in life, to sterilize the black community.
On top of their corporate cronies owning the mainstream media, the other ‘trump’ card the GOP retains, which allows them to continue doing whatever they desire in our political arena with little fear of repercussions, is that their corporate aficionados also own the proprietary rights to all electronic voting machines. What this implies is that only these companies by law are allowed to certify the tabulation accuracy of the electronic machines that are counting our votes. What is there for the obstructionist party to fear when their crony’s machines count our votes and proprietary laws allow no transparent verification of the machine’s accuracy? How many inexplicable election outcomes have we now witnessed that have given this corporate obstructionist party a super majority in both the US. Congress and most of the US. state houses? Without mandating electronic voting machine paper trails we will continue to see corporate republican party victories dominating our elections, all while these establishment hacks continue pursuing policies of ever greater military spending, police state powers, corporate free trade agreements, illegal military adventurism and austerity for the people.
I expect to see those machines flipping votes in Hillary’s favor – if she’s running against Trump.
Because she’s the candidate favored by Big Money.
You will, and they may already be in the primaries because the establishment does intend to allow a Sanders nomination
Good Comment – the only things you left out where the drive to decimate the educational system in North Carolina & Control what a woman can & cannot do with their own bodies! Is McCrory some kind of pervert who enjoys looking at zygotes? After living in NC for over 10 years, McCrory has certainly made me ready to leave. Everything he does, just disgusts me.