HB2 on the presidential stage

by | Apr 22, 2016 | Editor's Blog, National Politics, Presidential race | 10 comments

North Carolina continues to impress. Our much-debated discrimination bill made it into the GOP presidential contest. Donald Trump came out against HB2 while Ted Cruz came out in support.

Trump said that the state should have left it alone. “People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble.” He’s the libertarian on the issue.

Cruz then attacked Trump, picking up Pat McCrory’s line. He said that Trump “joined them in calling for grown men to be allowed to use little girls’ public restrooms.” Cruz is showing his big government conservativism that calls for government regulation of morality.

Cruz is still playing to the GOP base, hoping to catch Donald Trump in the run up to the convention. Trump, for his part, is feeling increasingly like the Republican nominee and shifting toward the middle. To be fair, though, that’s probably what Trump thinks. He doesn’t have a long history of gay bashing. He really does have New York values.

The new North Carolina Republican establishment has doubled down on its anti-LGBT position with Senate President Pro-Tem Phil Berger making it clear the law will not be repealed. Pat McCrory has tried to find middle ground but is stuck between looking weak if he can’t get the bill changed or looking extreme if he continues to support it. McCrory just wants the issue to go away. Instead, it’s now part of the Republican presidential primary debate and he’s on Ted Cruz’s side of the issue.

Donald Trump knows that he can’t win the presidency with just the Republican base. He’s starting to shift to the middle. It may be a difficult shift because his problems have less to do with ideology than rationality. His stance on HB2 is part of an effort to look reasonable. Cruz, for his part, wants to build momentum going into the election. To steal the nomination from Trump, he’ll need strong backing from the base. His position on HB2 reflects his standing in the race for delegates and the nomination.

10 Comments

  1. Chris

    The question in my mind is how long Phil Berger and Tim Moore can hold out as HB-2’s economic damage piles up. Are they really prepared to allow months of a drip, drip, drip of economic bad news? I believe they’re sweating it and are now realizing there is no easy face-saving solution. Anything less than full repeal will not end the boycotts. Yet the opposite, full speed ahead with the current law continues to poison the state’s economic well being and reputation.

    Sooner or later–with these two likely the latter–they will be forced to address the reality they created. In the meantime the pressure builds.

    • TbeT

      I respectfully disagree, Chris. They won’t repeal the discriminatory aspects of this bill.

      Their core base simply won’t allow it, and gerrymandered safe districts mean that no public polling results, no corporate expressions of opposition/concern, and no “slow-drip” of adverse economic impact will force them to reverse course.

      They are demonstrating that their ideology and their need to pander politically trumps everything else. Berger’s “fighting words” quotes today remain as harsh and as partisan as they were 3 weeks ago.

      I might feel differently if a very large corporation just up and left the state, or if the NFL, NBA and NASCAR actually cancels events here. Beyond those sorts of things, the courts will the only recourse, and a slow one, to redress this mistake.

  2. Someone from Main Street

    NCGOP has isolated North Carolina as a bastion of religious intolerance and bigotry. There is only one thing to do – vote them out in November.

  3. Russell

    Since his initial reasonable statement, the man has turned to the lever of States Rights, that thing used throughout our history by racists, sexist, bigots & champions of ignorance to maintain the culture of the C.S.A.
    Well David Price is no better. Nor are the rest of the Democrats. The Feds made pot illegal but now the line is “Let the States Decide.”.
    Number one factor in Mass Incarceration is the prohibition of pot. Clinton would keep it illegal. Now even Sanders adopts the good boy party line that talks about “rescheduling” instead of legalization.
    Well it is not surprising that the “liberal” performers don’t particularly enjoy the mental landscape of North Carolina. Fiona Apple canceled a concert here because her dog died. I commented that the Stagehands Union labor suffered loss of income. She wrote me to say she paid for the no show. I think there is a cut off for the contracts. So then when the Furniture Market is scaled back further it hurts the Union workers of IATSE. They had already lost work to the Furniture Market in Las Vegas.
    I am nonplussed that the union leadership has not spoken out, or maybe they have tried but it didn’t make the papers.
    The Right Wing is likely happy to hurt the Union in NC that provides professional labor to do the work that is necessary to make these shows happen. When your kids come home safe from seeing these shows it is because professionals know better than to set the place on fire.
    Far as Trump, well, there has never been any good reason to support him. Far as Democrats in general, any hopes invested in that institution, that Party, have been repeatedly shown to be misplaced.
    A complete end to the practice of Gerrymandering would be nice.

    50 years of incrementalism, wait your turn, be nice about it, and all that, well by the time half the state is under water again, nature will have shown us how incrementalism really works.

  4. Cosmic Janitor

    Let the NCGA republican extremist go down with HB2, can’t think of a more fitting end for these rightwing zealots. As for Trump, in a contest against the republican neo-con warmongering DINO Clinton – who as SOS has blood on her hands from Haiti to Honduras, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine and with Syria in her crosshairs, as she recently stated campaigning in NY, he’ll win by a landslide cause most of us ordinary citizens are fed-up with the republican neo-con’s warmongering to spread their capitalist fascism around the globe : Go Trump 2016!

  5. Norma Munn

    Yes, yes and yes, but “NY values” include a lot of ideas that Trump is most emphatically not. Nor would I trust this latest commentary from him. Left a lot of room to weasel from what I read. As for the GOP races in the state, sadly, I think they will still own most of them.

  6. Jay Ligon

    It’s Berger and his bigots against the world now. Great Britain is issuing travel warnings to travelers to the U.S., warning them of exceptional racism and intolerance in North Carolina and Mississippi. More CEOs are signing on to a petition repeal HR2 and more rock bands are canceling tour dates in this state. Eventually, the only musicians we’ll be able to hear will be Kidd Rock, Charlie Daniels and Ted Nugent. With every announcement of bad news, Berger doubles down on more bigotry. The world is getting the idea that North Carolina is that place where the locals get visitors in the deep woods and make them “squeal like a pig.”

    The Chamber of Commerce, the largest donor to right-wing causes in the U.S., has raised the white flag. They warn of a dire public relations catastrophe and irreparable damage to the Noth Carolina brand. Comedians mock the state, and businesses are moving out. Still, the GOP, which claims to have special expertise in business, slams the door on business opportunity. The racists on Jones Street are betting hatred of blacks will keep people of color from voting. They are betting that the dumbass middle class will not be able to figure out how much their taxes have been raised. They are hoping that no one will notice the water and air quality have been affected by relaxing laws protecting the environment. Finally, North Carolina, once the best place in the South for an education, is driving out teachers and firing thousands of teachers’ assistants.

    Racism is not a panacea. There are a lot of racists who will find comfort in the ugly rhetoric of intolerance, but that’s all they have to offer on Jones Street these days. Self-righteous hatred will not grow the economy or educate our children. It will repel conventions, tourists, and create the impression that this state is an abhorrent aberration in the land of the free. The current band of legislators is a caricature of the old south – a place where white men plant their feet in the past and look away from the bitter future ahead.

  7. Progressive Wing

    The level of fear-mongering used by HB2 proponents turns one’s stomach. They too often try to make their case by conjuring up images of little girls being violently assaulted in bathrooms, all with the unspoken undertone that transgenders (or LGBs in general) are sexual voyeurs and predators. It’s a sick mindset. And yet, there are no cases of any such bathroom assaults by transgenders.

  8. brad

    Interesting and agree with your assessment. Will be an intense battle between the two.

    On related note, If I hear one more politician(Cruz, Berger),talk shows hosts on national or local(WPTP) radio, or letters to the editor of newspapers, talk about grown men in the bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers with little girls, I really think my head will explode.

    • Barbara dantonio

      I agree with Brad. The fear mongering is ridiculous. There are no cases of this going on. As a user of women’s bathrooms for over 60 years, I see no problem since they have privacy stalls. Do they think people arrive in this world and decide to be something that will bring them ridicule from the right because they are not exactly like the far right. Let people be who they are. This should be a nonissue. This issue is worse than the ridiculous voter ID laws. They have gone too far and are hurting our state. We must continue fighting until we win.

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