The depths to which the North Carolina GOP is sinking raises serious questions about the shared sanity of that particular branch of the party. In case you hadn’t heard, the digested form is that they called a special session, supposedly to address some disaster recovery concerns, but now are apparently trying to pass legislation effectively stripping the Governor-elect, a Democrat, of the powers employed by the current governor, McCrory, who lost the election and is apparently a very sore loser. A North Carolina resident has sent me a link to the Facebook page of Jeff Jackson (D), a state Senator, where he’s written:
When we engage in blatant power grabs, there are consequences beyond merely writing bad laws and disrespecting the voters. We also broadcast to the rest of the country that we’re a state that isn’t committed to honest, decent government – and that brings a set of consequences all its own, as we’ve seen this year.
He then goes on to list links to stories in newspapers such as The New York Times and WaPo detailing these last-moment activities. And now I see this discouraging news, also from Senator Jackson:
In the end, it took Gov. McCrory less than one hour to sign the bill that will restrict the authority of incoming Gov. Cooper.
You deserve honest, decent leadership. Not this.
Well, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. As Jackson implies, there’s a variety of angles: voter reactions, corporate reactions, even the reactions of recruits for the famed UNC basketball program.
And the evaluation of the GOP should be interesting as well. Generally, American governance’s ideal has been to assume that the opposition is quite loyal; it may differ on policies, but the well-being of the State or Union is uppermost in our minds. The current behavior suggests that the GOP in NC has no such opinion of the Democrats; indeed, they seem to think their they’re all devils. And that, in turn, tells me that the GOP is composed of second- and third-raters, people who listen to the worst, not the best, who have learned to be obdurate and closed, rather than open and willing to learn. Or so I speculate; it’s hard to find an alternative that sounds both reasonable and better.
But one thing’s for sure: North Carolina’s legislature is making a strong bid for the title of The Most Toxic State in the Union.
