The bills are bad enough, but the Orwellian dishonesty behind them is the real damage. Sen. Chad Barefoot says he’s redrawing the Wake County Commission districts to provide more representation to rural areas and partisan representation has nothing to do with it. Sen. Trudy Wade says she wants to redistrict Greensboro City Council at the request of the business community. UNC Board of Governors Chair John Fennebresque says firing UNC President Tom Ross is not about politics but he can’t give any other reason for his dismissal. He also says closing the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity wasn’t about politics. Phil Berger says he’s trying to protect magistrates’ first amendment rights when he’s allowing them to shirk their obligations to marry same-sex couples.
Let’s cut through the bullshit. It’s all about heavy-handed, authoritarian politics. Nothing more, nothing less. Barefoot wants to overturn the 2014 election that gave Democrats 7-0 majority on the Wake County Commission. Since the business community Wade claims to represent has been silent on the issue, it’s obvious she wants to give the city council to Republicans. Firing Ross and closing the centers was pure politics and just proves how little independence the BOG has from its legislative masters. And Berger pushed a bill he knows is unconstitutional in a cynical pander to the homophobic wing of the Republican Party.
Republicans are creating a culture of dishonesty in Raleigh. They passed voter suppression laws designed to make voting more difficult for people who disagreed with them and claimed they were protecting the integrity of elections even though nobody had questioned the elections before. Pat McCrory spent 2013 making stuff up and getting caught by the press. They’ve finally put him in a box and won’t let him speak off the cuff anymore because nobody knows what will come out of his mouth–including him.
As North Carolina grows and the state becomes more diverse and better educated, Republicans know that a lot of their ideas won’t sit well with the majority of people. To protect their power, they’re rigging elections and stifling dissent. These tactics are not new to the South but the history is not pretty. Let’s hope there are some voices of reason within the North Carolina Republican Party.
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 >
“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters”
― Daniel Webster
CSA policies were that their labor was to be prevented from reading. Now it is to prevent labor for thinking about the wrong things. In my county the poverty rate is reported to be 26 percent. Poverty in the State is made invisible somehow. They show up for their jobs that don’t pay them a living wage, and the fiction is abroad that they need less down here, as if Wal Mart charges less here than in NJ. Whatever might be made up living in the trailer park is lost driving around.
Sorry, Mary, but I sense that nothing the Dems/liberals/progressives will do media-wise can best the propaganda impact of conservative TV and radio being broadcast all day long into homes, businesses, cars, and, from there, into the eyes/ears/minds of older (>65 median age) and white Americans. Folks at FOX and Clear Channel Radio have been masters of understanding how to energize biased “motivated reasoning,” i.e. the fitting new information into existing set attitudes and prejudices.
I think the only chance of stemming the tide is for the GOP/TP/Libertarian block to keep on making mistakes and reaching too far (the NC tax reform that wasn’t; a second gov shutdown; the Iran letter; discrimination against gays; claiming “no-go” zones; Giuliani’s idiotic statements; etc)……
Fox News and multiple conservative radio talk shows must get credit for this. I know folks who have this propaganda streaming all day on TV and in their cars. None of them are benefiting, but they are adamant about supporting their party. We need to modernize our message delivery…social media, popular culture messengers, entertainment venues…and press coverage, whether by Moral Monday marches or frequent press conferences.
Well, get used to it. The GOP learned a lot of these tactics while sitting on the sidelines all those years. The dem party was a good teacher.
Double amen. If you can’t beat ’em, cheat ’em — is the Republican way.
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/the-gop-wants-to-change-the-rules-to-win-the-elections-their-candidates-cant/Content?oid=4354470
This can all be righted with one simple demand by the voters: independent/transparent vote verification at the polls. How can it be otherwise, when the national consensus of voters is predisposed against republikan corporate rule, that the republikans continue racking-up one improbable election victory after the next? Electronic voting machines – scanners or otherwise, easiest way in the world to rig an election!
“They’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul. They’re beating the sh— out of Peter and telling Paul he’s next if he doesn’t toe the line.”
7-0
Amen.
Voices of reason in the NCGOP? I know of NONE.
It’s a depressing future prospect for the state. It appears that every attempt for positive, progressive, and open-minded change on social and political matters will be assailed, and thus at least slowed, either by legislation, political mischief, and judicial actions.
Gerrymandering is now the weapon of choice used to secure GOP power. Unless the 2020 elections are a big surprise (reversing the majority or narrowing it by a lot), gerrymandering will mean that any strong progressive trend for NC will be seriously hamstrung for 20 years [2011-2031].
Agreed. It’s a dismal picture. The only answer is to educate voters and get them to the polls regardless of voter suppression tactics. Yet how do you engage an apathetic, disconnected public. THAT is the Republicans best weapon.
Mary, you are exactly right. The GOP took the state over because Democrats let them. Now that they have power, they are cheating to be sure they keep it. But the public at large could care less. As long as Democratic turnout is low and inconsistent, then we will get more of the same.
Unless paper trails are mandated to verify voting machine tabulations you can expect republikan gains in all future elections, they’re not about to let go of a good thing and no matter how anathema they become they somehow continue winning our elections? Like Stalin said: ‘I care not how someone votes, I care only for who counts the vote’; well our votes are being counted by machines that need only be certified for accuracy by their manufacturer, a certification that cannot be legally challenged independently or transparently and furthermore, these machines, both electronic touch screen and scanners, have been shown to be easily and undetectably tampered with – and we are surprised the republikans continue winning elective office?