Gangster

 

I'm blatantly reprinting here Carter Wrenn's October 23rd post on "Talking About Politics." Wrenn, something of a legend as Sen. Jesse Helms's political guru, gets Donald Jethro Trump right. Wrenn is not the first commentator to notice Trump's resemblance to crime lords, but he kind of proves the point in that economical way he has with words:

During Prohibition, Al Capone was the most notorious New York tough guy. He didn’t grasp fame until after he moved to Chicago. But in those days no one matched him.

In the 1950’s, during the Army–McCarthy hearings, another New York tough guy, a lawyer, Roy Cohn, sitting beside Fightin’ Joe McCarthy pilloried witnesses. McCarthy fumbled. Collapsed. Back in New York, Cohn went to work as a fixer for mafia kingpins like John Gotti.

In 1973 in a New York night club Cohn met Donald Trump. Became Trump’s fixer. Mentor.

Today, Trump’s the modern version of a New York tough guy. And no one matches him. He’s got an iron grip on the Republican Party like no other president. In Tennessee in a primary eleven Republicans just ran for Congress – four days before the primary Trump’s own pollster showed Matt Van Epps losing. Trump endorsed Epps. Epps won by 26 points.

A message rolled across Washington, tremors rattling Republican congressmen: Don’t cross Trump – you’ll pay a price.

That’s a lynchpin of New York tough guys’ power: Fear. But fear doesn’t end in healing.

That last sentence startles me. It's something a liberal with a crystal fetish might say, and I don't understand why it's tacked on here. Wrenn even titled this little piece "Healing," embracing that word as the thesis of his essay. But trumpism is not about healing, and never will be. Gangster-rule is a cancer in the Republic. Heal it? No, kill it before it kills you.

Trump Crosses a New Line in the Sand -- Sending the Gestapo After His Enemies

 

Carter Wrenn, former political guru to the late Senator Jesse Helms, rose up to oppose Trump's latest gross abuse of power -- siccing law enforcement on people he has a grudge against

Last Thursday night, turning on the news, I watched [John Bolton] being interviewed on TV, explaining why he thought Trump was wrong about Putin. The next morning I got a surprise: When I turned on the TV I watched FBI agents raiding John’s home in Bethesda, Maryland.

In a nutshell: John Bolton disagreed with Trump. And the FBI raided John Bolton’s home. That was political retribution pure and simple.

Because they are Trump supporters most of my Republican friends saw nothing wrong with raiding an honest man’s house. But turning the FBI into a political weapon is an abuse of power. And it’s a mistake to ignore that Trump crossed a line in the sand when he did that to punish someone who disagreed with him.

Doomscrolling With Carter Wrenn

 

Carter Wrenn

It's not often that I would be quoting a conservative legend, but Carter Wrenn's piece "Strange Times" contains valuable reporting:

The other day I went to a news website, read down the page, here’s what I saw:

Hunter Biden saying, “F— George Clooney.”

Trump suing the Wall Street Journal for $20 billion – that’s billion with a ‘b.’

Afraid of losing control of Congress, Republicans are redrawing congressional districts in Texas – so they will elect 5 more Republicans.

Not sure of our steadfastness as allies anymore, our old friends in Britain, France, and Germany are heading down a new road – so they can protect themselves, without us. For example, Germany’s rebuilding its army. Lord knows where that leads.

Congress passed a law making it illegal for American tech companies to support TikTok. But the Attorney General, Pam Bondi’s, telling American businesses they can ignore the law. Because Trump doesn’t like it.

Secretary Scott Bessent’s telling us tariffs aren’t taxes. Secretary Howard Lutnik’s telling us tariffs aren’t paid out of people’s pockets. That’s sketchy. At best.

Popular podcaster Candace Owens, a huge social media star with millions of followers, said on her podcast that French President Macron’s wife, Brigitte, is a man. Macron asked her to stop. Owens claimed his wife’s a man again. And again. Now we’ve got the president of France suing an American podcaster.

And a fake video showing Barack Obama getting arrested, handcuffed by three FBI agents is all over the internet.

My own doomscrolling this morning produces a rival compilation of just how bad off we are right now:

Hegseth’s office exodus hides the real problem: It’s him

“Vote blue no matter who,” unless it’s Mamdani?

Florida is the laboratory for MAGA — and American autocracy

Ghislaine Maxwell moved to minimum-security Texas prison camp

Smithsonian erases Trump’s impeachments from history museum exhibit

“It was frightening”: Federal judges speak out on vicious threats from MAGA fans

Trump, unraveling, digs himself in deeper with Epstein

Leavitt: It’s time Trump won a Nobel Peace Prize

Character Is Still Trump’s Achilles Heel

 

Carter Wrenn* dissects the poll:

Last week, opening a poll, turning pages I read about voters in a NC district: Trump’s approval rating was Approve 51%, Disapprove 47% – not bad. But buried between the lines was a subtle hitch: The voters who approved of Trump split into two groups – 70% liked both Trump’s policies and his character. But 30% liked his policies but not his character....

That second group is ambivalent. They see things they like but also see things – about Trump – they don’t like. What that means is simple: Those voters could tilt against Trump. ...

There was also a generic ballot question in the poll: If the election were held today would you vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate? The Republican trailed by 2 points – in a district Trump won by 7 points.

More troubling: One-fourth of the people who said they’d vote for the Republican candidate also said they ‘dislike’ Trump’s character. That should scare the hell out of Republicans. Those ambivalent voters could switch sides and vote for a Democrat. Or simply not vote. And that could turn the off-year election into a disaster for Republicans.

*Carter Wrenn was the conservative operative and guru behind Jesse Helms. Now he's one of two opinion writers at Talking About Politics, paired with Democrat Gary Pearce.

The Big Lie Repels Unaffiliated Voters

 

The headline above comes as a claim made by Carter Wrenn at the resurrected blog, Talking About Politics. Carter Wrenn was the political brains behind the irresistible rise of Jesse Helms back in the 1970s, running the Raleigh-based Congressional Club fundraising juggernaut for a couple of dark decades. In other words, he's no wussy country-club Republican but a true (and intellectual) conservative. So I pay attention to his opinions, especially when they come with supporting data.

(Gary Pearce is back too at "Talking About Politics." When Pearce left the blog to write a book in 2021, my memory is that Carter Wrenn tried to keep it going but it gradually went dormant. Glad to see it's back.)

Here's an extract of Wrenn's article, "The Price You Pay," published last Wednesday. I pray he's right -- "cheering a lie comes with a price."

...Polls aren’t quite that cut and dried – there are crooked pollsters and rigged polls. But real polls are just about the only objective measurement in politics – and last fall’s exit polls told a story about Republicans.

36% of the voters were Republicans, 33% Democrats, 31% Independents – more Republicans voted than Democrats, a three point edge. Enough to decide elections in swing states. Good news for Republicans.

But the next number showed bad news: For three decades Independents had voted against the party of the man sitting in the White House in off-year elections. There was only one exception: In 2002, after 9/11.

But, in 2022, even with Joe Biden in the White House, Independents voted for Democrats – in Pennsylvania’s Senate election by 20 points (58% to 38%), in Arizona by 17 points (56% to 39%), in Georgia by 11 points. Independents turned thumbs down on Republican Senate candidates in every swing state. Higher than expected Republican turnout saved J.D. Vance in Ohio and Ted Budd in North Carolina but Republican Senate candidates lost New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.

Biden’s popularity was underwater with Independents – by 23 points (37% to 60%). Why didn’t that sink Democrats? Because Donald Trump was more unpopular than Biden, minus 36 points (30% to 66%).

One last number: The exit polls said Independents believed Republicans could handle the economy better than Democrats – so why did they vote for a Democrat like John Fetterman by 20 points? The election ended up being about character. Not issues. To Independents lies mattered. Trump hammered his mantra – “The election was stolen” – over and over. His candidate – Mehmet Oz – nodded. And on election day Oz found out cheering a lie comes with a price.

 

Thom Tillis Draws a Primary Challenger. Oh My!

The Raleigh News and Observer (specifically, Brian Murphy) broke the news yesterday that Raleigh businessman Garland Tucker III, senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation, and author of "Conservative Heroes: Jefferson to Reagan," filed paperwork to run in the March 2020 Republican primary against incumbent Senator Thom Tillis. Of note: Carter Wrenn, conservative strategist who was at Jesse Helms's elbow for decades, has signed on to advise the Tucker campaign.

Here's where it gets immediately intriguing: Tillis instantly attacked Tucker as an "anti-Trump activist." Bold words there, Senator, from the man who opposed Trump for his position on immigration, protecting the special counsel, and Trump’s national emergency declaration. (Murphy does point out that Tillis has voted with Trump 94.7 percent of the time. But still.)

Tucker does look pretty anti-Trump, and the Tillis people are fanning that coal:

Tillis’s team pointed to a 2016 News & Observer column in which Tucker said he was begrudgingly voting for Trump, whose nomination he had “stoutly resisted” during the primary. 

“Trump is a twice-divorced, self-acknowledged adulterer who has, in the course of this campaign, uttered some of the most unkind, disgusting comments ever made by any American politician,” Tucker wrote in the piece. “Sadly, Clinton offers no personal moral superiority.” 

In May 2015, Tucker hosted a 250-person luncheon in his backyard for then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign for the Republican presidential nod.

Tucker's hiring of Carter Wrenn is another signal of anti-Trumpism, as Wrenn has made no secret on his blog of his disdain for Twitterman. And Wrenn efficiently drilled his stubby finger into Tillis's weak spot: "...Tillis is a Washington politician, who talks a good game, but when you look at how he votes, it doesn’t match up,” Wrenn told a reporter from The Hill. “He has his finger to the air and he flip flops” on the issues.

At the moment no big name Democrat has announced a campaign for the Tillis seat. We hope that changes. And soon.

A Rising Tide Sinks All Dingbats

Board of Elections fundraising reports were due in Raleigh yesterday, and there was at least one bombshell discovery: Attorney General and presumptive Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper is out-raising sitting governor and presumptive screw-up Pat McCrory ... by a good country mile.

When confronted with this news, the McCrory campaign put on its "What, Me Worry?" idiot grin: "...we’re just now getting started,” said Billy Constangy, director of The Pat McCrory Committee. “While Gov. McCrory is focused on doing his full-time job as governor of North Carolina, our growing network of supporters will ensure we have the resources necessary to show how North Carolina is moving forward and creating jobs under his leadership.”

"We're Just Now Getting Started!" There's a bumper-sticker for you!

"Doing his full-time job as governor of North Carolina." How's that working for you? Your own party's leaders in the General Assembly obviously regard you ... well, they scarcely regard you at all, and when they do, it's less than complimentary.

Republican strategist and former Jesse Helms political guru Carter Wrenn can read the fundraising tea leaves: “You very seldom see a challenger outraising an incumbent when it’s a governor or senator,” Wrenn said. “This is a really good sign for Roy Cooper. He’s outraising a sitting governor. I don’t know when the last time that happened.”

This will up the right-wing pressure on what's-his-name -- Dan Forest, our divinely inspired lieutenant governor -- to run a primary against McCrory, though that in itself would be a fool's errand. In other words, how can Dan Forest resist the temptation?

Governor McCrory is laughing manically at what he sees over his right shoulder, but that rising tide is gaining on him and is no laughing matter.

Well Bless His Heart

Speaker of the NC House Thom Tillis, who had earlier declined to participate in the Republican Senate debate on WRAL, has suddenly "cleared his calendar" of those pesky conflicts. He will participate, after all, in next Wednesday's televised debate.

Could the clearing of his calendar have anything at all to do with the fact that he's struggling mightily to gain even an inch on clinching the nomination? Might it have anything to do with Carter Wrenn's blog post today?

Naw, we didn't think so either.

Republican Civil War

According to Joe Killian in the Greensboro News&Record, Conservatives for Guilford County, a tea party-inspired political action committee, has been "a divisive presence in Guilford County Republican circles for several years. The group has supported primary challengers against sitting Republicans that it said aren’t real conservatives, butted heads with Republican Party leadership, and traded barbs with Republican stalwarts like Greensboro City Councilman Tony Wilkins, Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes and former Guilford County Commissioner Billy Yow."

Therefore, Conservatives for Guilford County is holding its own candidate forum on Monday to which not-conservative-enough Republicans running for U.S. Senate or U.S. House in the 6th Congressional District are either not invited or were invited but declined to come.

House Speaker Thom Tillis, the leading Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, ain't coming. Neither is the leading candidate for Congress, Phil Berger Jr., who's running to replace Congressman Howard Coble along with a sizable collection of ... also rans.

Greensboro City Councilman Zack Matheny, Berger's most credible rival for the 6th Congressional seat nomination, was blunt in his refusal to attend the Tea Party dust-up: “That group has made it a point that they don’t support me. Some of their members say and write bad things about me constantly. So even if I didn’t have another event, I doubt my team would recommend I attend anyway.”

Jesse Helms's old operative Carter Wrenn is working for Bruce VonCannon, another rival to Phil Berger. VonCannon feigned ignorance about the candidate forum: I know nothing about it, VonCannon claimed, which means, we guess, that he ain't courting the Far Right (which also raises the question about what sort of campaign advice he's getting from Wrenn, who is fully capable of surprising us on a fairly regular basis).

Wrenn told Joe Killian that he thought a primary death-match between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment was salutary for the future of the party.

Maybe. Whether a chair-flinging, bare-knuckled, eye-gouging, balls-to-the-walls primary helps or hurts November turn-out for Republicans remains to be seen. And whether Carter Wrenn thought it was a good idea or not, he's got it coming straight at him.

Fun times!

Meanness

Carter Wrenn, who was Sen. Jesse Helms house-guru for many years (and hence knows a thing or two about meanness of the political variety), sounds a note of warning about the deep strain of outright meanness that's been bleeding through a whole lot of legislation in Raleigh since the Republicans took over.

Giving Quid Pro Quo a Bad Name

John Deere Inc. induces members of the NC General Assembly, particularly Republican Majority Leader in the NC House Paul Stam, to pass legislation that will favor the company in state contracts (previously), and the company reciprocates by giving the bill's sponsors (including most particularly Paul Stam) $20,000.

One of the bill's other sponsors is Republican David Lewis, a Harnett County farm equipment dealer who carries the John Deere line.

This a.m. Carter Wrenn, the conservative Republican operative and now blogger, had this to say about the confluence of influence and money:

"...any way you look at it seven legislators taking $20,000 from John Deere [and] then sponsoring a bill to help them get state business doesn’t pass the smell test."

If you're emitting a foul odor to one of your most ardent supporters, you're emitting a foul odor.

Good Question

Carter Wrenn asks it of Gov. Beverly Perdue.

More News From Rawly-Rawly-Creepy-Crawly

Republican leadership in the NC General Assembly make moves to return partisanship to the election of our judges. Because you can never be too rich or too partisan.

Bob Hall of the non-partisan Democracy NC (they raised hell about Jim Black's nefarious activities and about Gov. Mike Easley's shenanigans) testified at yesterday's hearing on the proposed voter ID bill, and resoundingly panned it. Of particular note is what he had to say about absentee voting:

...[The proposed law] doesn’t add any new safeguards on absentee voting; in fact, this bill makes it easier to get an absentee ballot. But here’s the truth: the rate of somebody impersonating someone else is ten times higher for people voting with absentee ballots than those who vote in person. Ten times!

Conservative Republican warhorse Carter Wrenn gets rueful about the "parade of lobbyists (from Insurance Companies, the Medical Society, the Hospital Association, the Pharmaceutical Industry and the Chamber of Commerce) sauntering into [Republican] Speaker Thom Tillis’ office beaming from ear to ear delighted at the prospect of tilting the laws in their favor." People in power sell to the highest bidder.

Two groups that Republicans have extended "personhood" to: corporations and fetuses. Not so lucky: people out of work and people about to be forced into unemployment by cuts to education in the NC General Assembly.

Everything That Rises Must Converge

Carter Wrenn, the man who turned Jesse Helms from mush-mouthed TV personality into mush-mouthed Avatar of the Right Wing, has some words of warning directed at the new Republican majority in the General Assembly and their decision to embrace the Art Pope Vision for Tomorrow:

...over in the State Legislature, big business is having its best day in quite awhile. According to the newspaper, several members of our newly elected Republican Majority have adopted the Chamber of Commerce’s legislative agenda more or less down the line. For example, they’re pushing bills to implement the Chamber’s plan to make our justice system ‘rational, fair and predictable’ which, translated from political-speak into plain English, means changing our laws to favor big business. Senate Republican Leader Harry Brown is even pushing a beach replenishment-groin building plan to provide relief to beleaguered enclaves like Figure 8 Island and Bald Head Island.

...embracing the political agenda of the second least popular group of folks in America [Big Business] may not be such a good idea. In fact, it could turn out to be the worst idea Republicans have had since Reconstruction.

But, then, what does Carter Wrenn know?

True Colors

Carter Wrenn, than whom you just about can't be much more conservative, posts a warning to the new Republican majority in the U.S. House: Might want to think twice about repealing the new regs on Wall Street bankers:

...the Wall Street Banks are now rubbing their hands together and purring over the prospect of the new Republican Majority repealing the President's new banking regulations -- like the legislation the Democrats passed that cut debit card fees for retailers, costing banks billions.

And the Washington Republicans aren't exactly saying to the banks: Forget about it.

Who'd have imagined it: It's just two weeks after the election and in their political wisdom the Washington Republicans are contemplating doing favors for the only villain in sight who's even more unpopular than President Obama: The Banks.

The sooner this new (old) generation of Republicans dances on their puppet-strings to the only puppet-masters they've ever had -- the super rich and the super pious -- the sooner the Democrats can perhaps grow some sinew to take them on.

Supreme Court Chickens

...are coming home to roost.

The Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC last year ruled that corporations could spend as much as they please trying to elect people who'll do their bidding or defeat people who didn't do their bidding. That decision was based on the legal reasoning that a corporation is the same as a living, breathing, eating, excreting human being and deserves the same rights under the 14th Amendment. (The 14th Amendment, O my brethren, was enacted to protect the weak. So, see how warped the legal minds of the John Roberts Court have become.)

Anyhoo ... if you've followed the nastiness in Stanly County, NC, over the polluting of the Yadkin River by the Alcoa Corporation, which I confess I haven't, you might be interested to know that Alcoa is now unleashing its corporate "personhood" to defeat through advertising $$ the sitting county commissioners who dared to sue them for the pollution.

Carter Wrenn (of all people!), the man who unleashed Jesse Helms on the universe, is now outraged about corporate power and gives the only summary we've so far seen of the "coming storm" of corporate muscle crushing ordinary American citizens and how that's currently playing out in Stanly County. The most conservative Republican we can personally think of can clearly see the poison the Roberts Supreme Court has spilled on the landscape.

Yet there are Republican voices in the state, and even in Stanly County, who still scream that the sacred Free Enterprise System demands that a company like Alcoa cannot, must not, be called to account.

Liddy Dole's Naked Desperation

The Charlotte Observer editorializes today that Liddy Dole's Kay-Hagan-doesn't-believe-in-God ad is "indecent." It is Dole's apparent attempt to get down to Jesse Helms's level of campaign rhetoric, says the Observer, which invokes Helms's infamous "white hands" ad against Harvey Gantt in 1990. Somewhere, the late Helms must be "smiling and cheering from the great beyond."

The ad, says the Observer, "is also a deliberate attempt by Dole's campaign not just to distort the truth, but to shatter Hagan's admirable record as an elder for more than a decade in Greensboro's First Presbyterian Church, as a Sunday School teacher and a volunteer in her church's fundraising campaigns, worship services and community service programs."

But here's the real question: if Dole's claim against her opponent is that Hagan doesn't believe in God and Liddy Dole DOES, we'd like very much to know what God sanctions this kind of lying. Would he be MAMMON?

FOOTNOTE
Carter Wrenn, guru of NC conservative Republicans: "My guess is the next sound you may hear will be the roof falling in on Liddy Dole."

Another 'No Confidence' Vote

When Carter Wrenn calls Condi Rice an incompetent ninny and declares that the Bush administration is wholly lacking in credibility ... the bottom really is dropping out.

Carter Wrenn Sees Writing on the Wall

So there was King Belshazzar, feeling every inch the neo-con ruler of the world, and he threw a huge feast for a thousand of his lords and generals, and as he drank he became every more expansive in his arrogance, and he sent for the sacred vessels out of the Jewish temple that had been sacked by the Babylonians, and Belshazzar and his lords drank wine out of the vessels and caroused and carried on.

Until a moving hand wrote on the wall of the banqueting house (according to the King James version), "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," which turned out to indicate increasingly lighter weights of measure to symbolize the decline of the house of Belshazzar and the utter destruction of the arrogant Babylonian empire, destined to fade to nothingness ... sooner rather than later. You know the story.

Carter Wrenn, former political guru to former Sen. Jesse Helms, writes today that he has seen the new writing on the wall, and it seems to foretell the sweeping away of the Bushalonian Empire.

And who are we to argue with that?