Three who influenced our state more than any in our history

One of my best History professors liked to talk about the ironies of history. Western culture portrays history as a linear march, perhaps guided by a secular eschatology advancing humankind from barbarism to civilization. The truth is that history is pliable and unpredictable. Sometimes the most profound truths are found in contradiction—in incidences of irony. 

But sometimes irony is simply tawdry. Congressman Tim Moore is tawdry. A portly, bespectacled 55-year-old attorney, Moore has been active in public life for almost 25 years without making any notable contributions to the commonweal. He has, however, managed to treat the commonweal as a personal feast. He's used his influence to gobble up clients for his law practice, to profit immensely from shady land deals, and to build a fortune that allows him—a resident of working-class Kings Mountain with a degree from Oklahoma City University School of Law—to enjoy a Maserati, a big, shiny SUV, and a powerboat, which he once parked at the legislative building. 

Tim Moore is not an idealist. Yet he was one of the three central figures in a “Conservative Revolution” that was one of the most ambitious ideological experiments in modern American history. Visionary and aggressive, State Senator Phil Berger, future US Senator Thom Tillis, and Moore himself imposed radical changes on North Carolina state government that transformed the state from a moderate exception in the South to a hot, flaming exemplar of Dixie reaction. These three men have exercised as much influence on state government as any three leaders in North Carolina history. 

Yet, like a line of dominoes, the leaders of this Tar Heel vanguard have begun to fall. Pat McCrory, who was governor during the most intense period of the Conservative Revolution, lost his seat in humiliation and has fallen into the degraded position of regional conservative talk radio host. There are likely people who have moved to North Carolina who have never heard of Pat McCrory. Thom Tillis gave up on placating his party’s MAGA base and announced his retirement from the US Senate. And Phil Berger, whose fervor burned more incandescently than anyone’s, faced the most spectacular collapse: An internationally noted defeat at the hands of his local sheriff. 

They’re gone. The zeitgeist has changed. But Tim Moore of King’s Mountain is the last one standing. This is an irony as large and notable as anything in one state’s politics can be. The 

man who had the least ideological investment in the Conservative Revolution is the one who survived the inevitable revolutionary purge. Berger built a personal empire that made him an overwhelmingly dominant power in state government. His rural constituents reminded him of his political mortality. Tillis wanted to be a Big Fish in Washington, pretty clearly aspiring to become Vice President or Senate Republican Leader. And Donald Trump, in what may be early-stage dementia, has claimed that Senator Tillis has already left Washington—an irrelevance that actually looms by the end of the year. 

Tim Moore, with so much graft and greed on his record, is a US House Member with a safe seat and choice access to the DC corruption market. While Berger and Tillis thrusted for maximal ideological impact, Tim Moore shiftily operated in the openings of the political system, getting rich, evading censure, and building a grifting operation that is as prosperous as ever. It’s an irony as unsavory as the Conservative Revolution itself