The Governor has no clothes
Published August 29, 2013
by Thomas Mills, Politics North Carolina, August 28, 2013.
North Carolina Republicans are in trouble. Not only because of what they’ve done but because they’ve lost any sense of objectivity. They started believing their own talking points and dismiss any critics, even from their own party. It’s a common affliction among wing-nuts of both parties but, in the GOP, the leadership has bought into their own hype.
When Colin Powell called out his own party and criticized their voter suppression program, the party dismissed him and the folks on social media claimed the General had long ago lost credibility. Maybe for them, but not for the rest of us. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be pulling down $100,000 speaking fees.
In a Bloomberg article, former Republican Governor Jim Martin said that the legislature had gone to far. But Pat McCrory was still blaming everybody but his own staff for the bad press and still defending the bad policies. In Asheville this week, he slammed reporters as not being smart enough to understand economics.
And when salary-gate broke, Pat McCrory defended $20,000 raises for 24 year old new hires with no experience by saying he didn’t want to engage in age discrimination. And he’s still using that line. Has nobody told him how silly he looks?
And while the whole GOP bandwagon is screaming that the voter suppression laws are about protecting integrity, not discrimination or suppression, Phyllis Shlafly, the right-wing homophobe, is applauding the new laws because they will keep Obama supporters from voting. Talk about stepping on your own message.
Virtually every newspaper in the state has criticized the GOP and many, if not most, endorsed McCrory. Instead of figuring out how to mitigate the fallout from the negative stories, Republicans have attacked the credibility of the media across the state. To hear them tell it, the newspapers and TV stations have all become liberal shills. It’s laughable, but it’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
The deeper they dig in, the less credibility they have. Cable news, talk radio and right-wing blogs might drive the narrative for the GOP base, but TV news and newspapers still drive it for the rest of us. Waging war on the storytellers is a bad idea.
August 29, 2013 at 1:02 pm
dj anderson says:
Why would Democrats tell the governor he's naked?
As for Colin Powell, the man who proved with pictures to the UN that WMDs were in Iraq, who isn't living in NC, well, he is just a name on the bandwagon to condemn NC.
The voting law, with 10 days of early voting and hours of early voting hours unchanged leave NC among the liberal states, and the ID required (most states require ID) is OK by me since I've had others vote for my wife and I one year.
Vouchers, less money to the UNC system, more to the grade schools, fewer assistants and more teachers I can handle too, and the teacher pay will go up when teachers support Republicans like they did the Democrats.
The one big bad thing to me this session was not extending Medicaid to 500,000 NC'ians. I don't understand that one. NC can't stop DC from bankrupting the country, so get it while you can.
