There must be something in the water up in Raleigh. As a reporter in the Charlotte area I interviewed McCrory a few times and sat through way too many meetings over which he presided, and I knew the NC house speaker reasonably well when he was just a humble town commissioner in Cornelius. I didn't see eye to eye with them on a lot of issues, but I also thought they were both reasonable, pragmatic people. I've watched in absolute horror as they've basically ignored what's going on in the state in favor of pursuing the national party's ideological agenda. At a time when unemployment was above 10% in NC, Tillis made an amendment banning gay marriage his top priority, even while admitting that he fully expected it to be overturned within 10 years. With unemployment still well above the national average, McCrory's solution is to lube up and tell the jobless to bend over. What dicks.