Drip, Drip, Drip...

Told you!

WASHINGTON — Far-right media figures, relatively small in number but potent in their influence, have embarked on a furious Internet expedition to cover Representative Paul D. Ryan in political silt....

"Latest Unease on Right: Ryan Is Too Far Left," New York Times, 12 October 2015

The House Speakership Will Destroy Congressman Paul Ryan

The speakership will destroy any Republican who takes the job.

Because the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party will never compromise on anything.

Witness the scribbling of North Carolina Tea Party blogger Brant Clifton.

Tea Party Advice We Wish Tillis Would Adopt

Brant Clifton, our favorite scenery-chewer on the far right who always finds plenty of fault with Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Thom Tillis, is out with some advice on how Mr. Tillis should get off defense and on offense against Sen. Kay Hagan:

Tillis also appears to be buying into Hagan’s war on women nonsense. He’s sending his wife out to make campaign appearances for him. He’s hauling in South Carolina Nikki Haley to Fayetteville this week. If he even tried to look and sound conservative, he could have attack-babes like Laura Ingraham and Sarah Palin out there rallying the troops for him. (But no, he’s getting Chris Christie.)

Well, he's "getting" Chris Christie into the state for a private fundraiser. If there are any firm plans to show Christie off to ordinary voters, it hasn't surfaced yet.

But by all means, yes, let's get some Republican female-brand furniture stripper like Laura Ingraham in to rigidify Mr. Tillis's anemic conservative credentials. And Sarah Palin. Oh, especially Sarah Palin! How could Tillis go wrong with the woman recently made famous by a dog-pile fracas that erupted at a snowmobilers party in Alaska? The quote I loved from that: "The party was peaceable until the Palins arrived."

Other advice from Clifton? Hammer Obamacare, sez he ... when every poll we've been seeing suggests strongly that the general voting public has moved on. Too, too many formerly uninsured Americans have now gotten some insurance coverage, to their considerable relief, so, yes again, by all means, Mr. Tillis, you should start harping all over again about how insurance coverage for all Americans is a dangerous idea. (Attacks on Obamacare had already pretty much disappeared from TV ads supporting Mr. Tillis, as though some people had a clue.)

We can feel Mr. Clifton's pain. After tens of millions of $$ expended to tout Thom Tillis and to attack Kay Hagan, millions by Karl Rove and other third-party interlopers, Tillis has zero traction ... largely because he's dragging around a very unpopular NC General Assembly as a major anchor on his hopes.

Extremism, Masquerading in Country Club Dress

Big Boob(s) in Ashvegas

The District 3 County Commissioner race in Buncombe County is an all-Republican circus, with two extremely conservative challengers (until yesterday) trying to oust a Republican incumbent. Whoever wins the primary takes the seat.

Until yesterday, a prime Tea Party candidate, Lewis Clay, was in the race to win, but then it came to light that Mr. Clay had "likes" on his Facebook page of "Bored and Available" and "Big Boobs."

Oops.

The "Big Boobs" site is apparently not a tribute page for extremely conservative politicians who can't keep their appetites under wraps, though that would be appropriate.

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!

Thom Tillis Doesn't Show at "The Stupid Candidates" Tea Party

Back earlier this year, discredited Republican king-maker Karl Rove said on Fox News, "Our object is to avoid having stupid candidates who can't win general elections, who are undisciplined, can't raise money, aren't putting together the support necessary to win a general election campaign."

Rove was announcing that he and the big donors behind his Crossroads Super PAC were going to be recruiting Republican candidates who looked good and knew how to keep their traps shut, hiding their extreme views until they get onto the floor of the U.S. Senate, and then let their freak flag fly!

One of the slicksters that Rove decided to anoint was Speaker of the NC House Thom Tillis, who has been struggling for traction but who is now blessed with not one but four Tea Party challengers, including one certifiable prober of women's vaginas, one God-addled crusader against gays, one talk radio screecher, and one woman who seems to have wandered in from a 1950s taping of "Queen for a Day." With that congregation against him, Tillis is guaranteed a win in next May's primary.

But never mind that. The circus pulled up in Gastonia last night -- the four Tea Partiers with Tillis absent -- and they left their Maalox at home. It was all acid reflux all the time. They stripped the wax off the floor.

Oh Tillis was invited all right, but he was otherwise engaged with none other than Karl Rove, who's been in our state raising money for his "not stupid" candidate Tillis. Did we say there was heartburn in Gastonia last night? The mere presence of Karl Rove within our state's boundaries was enough for at least two of the Tea Party candidates to belch fire. We hear the curtains burst into flame.

Wheels Come Off Haywood County GOP

A report in the Smoky Mountain News goes into depth on the splintering of the Haywood County Republican Party, which is being taken over by a far right Tea Party faction.

Favorite quote from one of the insurgents: "Many of us appear to be caustic, abrupt and irrational, but we are not.”

Can't help noticing, after several months of Templeton family values at the head of the Watauga County Republican Party, that our local GOP is probably ripe for a similar revolution.

Thom Tillis, Not Popular With the Tea Party

Christian theocrat and NC House member Larry Pittman brags that he preaches politics from the pulpit of his church -- and if you don't like it, you can suck on a gun barrel -- and he incidentally calls out his leader in the NC House, Republican Thom Tillis, for being insufficiently devoted to Christ, guns, and guts at a Tea Party gathering in Cabarrus County.


Pittman preaches the One True Religion for the first several minutes and begins to go after Thom Tillis about 10 minutes in. Tillis is "squeamish," suggests Pittman, about really making the voter photo ID bill as tough as Pittman thinks it should be.

Pittman also has a good deal to say about the resolution -- quashed by Thom Tillis -- that would have declared North Carolina capable of establishing a state religion. Thom Tillis is a dictator, an anti-Christian dictator, according to Pittman, because he wants to run for U.S. Senate next year against Kay Hagan.

Thom Tillis is an effing politician, it appears. Who knew?

The Pittman video has already made headlines over at The Daily Haymaker, where Brant Clifton has never concealed his contempt for Thom Tillis.

Tea Party "Utopia" Is North Carolina's Dystopia

Art Pope

"With no remaining checks to Republican rule in North Carolina, the state has now become a haven for some of the most ideological — and ill-considered — tea party fantasies dressed up as legislation." All at the behest of millionaire puppet-master, Art Pope, now budget director to Governor McCrory.

The long list of radical legislation now moving in the General Assembly in Raleigh has been designed to dismantle every progressive feature of North Carolina.

What has it gotten us go far? Republicans haven't just taken control of the budget. They've had control for two years. Recall that they passed their own budget over the governor's veto in 2011. And what has all that Republican wisdom gotten us? Higher unemployment, for one thing. They preached jobs, jobs, jobs, like a hypnotist cooing "Sleep now, sleep, sleeeeeep," and meanwhile the state's lost jobs, and the Republican radicals in the General Assembly, with McCrory's assent, tightened access to unemployment benefits.

That's the Tea Party "utopia" in a nutshell.

A Cure for Political Disaffection

Was watching the 1964 movie "Seven Days in May" on TCM and heard this bit of astute political dialogue between a fictional President of the United States and the military general who intends to supplant him in a planned insurrectional take-over of the government. The general refers to himself by his full name as be begins talking:

General James Mattoon Scott: James Mattoon Scott ...  hasn't the slightest interest in his own glorification. But he does have an abiding interest in the survival of this country.
President Jordan Lyman: Then, by God, run for office. You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country - why in the name of God don't you have any faith in the system of government you're so hell-bent to protect?

(The entire confrontational scene between president and treasonous general -- with Burt Lancaster as the general -- is available on YouTube.)

Why has the general organized an armed rebellion to put the president out of office and himself into power? Because President Lyman has signed an arms treaty with the Russians, something that the general thinks weakens us to the point of being sitting ducks for Communist take-over.

This movie came out less than a year after the assassination of President John Kennedy, when possible conspiracies were very much in the air, and it plumbed a certain civic paranoia in a very realistic way. Plus it featured a great cast, including Fredric March as the president, Ava Gardner, Kirk Douglas, and a whole bunch of great character actors.

There was considerable conservative disaffection in the air in those days, particularly in the South and particularly over forced integration. Forget forced health-insurance reform, which in the scheme of things is but a blip of controversy compared to what the Kennedy and then the Johnson administrations were working to achieve ... actual racial justice.

Run for office, sez the fictional president. That's the way our Republic is supposed to work. Let the people decide whether your vision of America is their vision too.

If you think the country is being taken over by socialism, run for office and say so. If you think government will eventually figger a way to confiscate all firearms (including Great-Grandpap’s Civil War musket) and homo-sex-ewe-alls are evidence of the eternal damnation that God Almighty is even now meting out to the United States, run for office and say so.

If you can't run for office and say what you actually want, or fear, then that might tell you something about your own problems, and your own warped perceptions.

Losses to the Body Politic

These interviews with retiring Congressmen give me new respect for Republican Steven LaTourette of Ohio and Democrat Brad Miller of North Carolina. LaTourette speaks frankly about the Tea Party Republicans who've strong-armed the Republican Conference, and Miller speaks frankly about the cluelessness of the Obama White House.

The loss of such men from our deliberative bodies is a blow to our democracy. As we prepare to cascade over that famous cliff, we wonder if this country has simply become irrevocably ungovernable. That's as dark a thought as one can have approaching a New Year.

What's Ahead in North Carolina

Even while the National Rifle Association was going very silent over the Newtown massacre, North Carolina gun enthusiasts were just getting more juiced.

First, the Asheville Tea Party announced a "Great Gun Give-Away" of a model .223 assault rifle that looks a good deal like the one Adam Lanza used in the Connecticut grade school. The Asheville Tea Party is throwing in two 30-round clips, provided you pay $20 for a chance to win and then actually win this prize.

Then comes news this a.m. that Grass Roots North Carolina is asking the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly to allow public school teachers to carry, thus lifting the ban on guns in schools.

There's nothing to stop our General Assembly from doing this, and more. Certainly, our new governor won't stop them.

More Cracks in the Norquist Dam

It appeared that Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss was the first to turn apostate about the Grover Norquist no-tax pledge that he himself, Saxby Chambliss, had previously signed. Then yesterday Republican Senator Lindsay Graham publicly waffled on a Sunday morning Bloviators' Show. (So did Republican Rep. Peter King, on Meet the Press, and John McCain, on Fox News Sunday.)

Actually, none of those guys were the first to crack. Republican Senator Tom Coburn, way back in July, wrote an op-ed published in the NYTimes that complained about Norquist’s “tortured definition of tax purity” while concluding that the Norquist pledge is now irrelevant.

More amazing ... the sudden defection of Arizona's newest Republican Senator Jeff Flake, than which there is no more conservative individual in Congress (Flake voted with Virginia Foxx to deny federal relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). During a candidate debate this year, Flake actually denied having ever signed the Norquist pledge, though he most certainly did. “The only pledge I’d sign [now] is a pledge to sign no more pledges,” Flake said, which was his way of saying, "Don't count on me, Grover."

We knew Norquist's grip on Republican gonads was really doomed when we heard Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday say on November 11th:

"It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer. Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?"

Under these circumstances, what's a Tea Partier to do? More to the point, what will Grover Norquist order them to do?

"More of an Ideology Stand Than Anything"

WRAL's Laura Leslie tracked down Randy Dye, the "conservative blogger and activist" who's behind the North Carolina petition to secede from the Union (the video is below). Seems like a sane guy, but he believes the election is proof that the country is headed toward "socialism." (Why none of these folks are ever asked to define socialism I can't decipher.)

Then he makes us a very generous offer: "The Democrats can have this country. They deserve it. It's going to fall, I think." I realize that there's a worm in that bud, like a man giving away a house that just burned, but still .... Is Mr. Dye being half-way accommodating in suggesting that Democrats will be allowed to stay, and to breed?

It's clear that Randy Dye doesn't expect anything like secession to actually happen. It's a gesture, "an ideology stand," he says, and that's cool. Our Constitution allows for that.

Allegiance

A golden oldie: The current Tea Party majority on the Watauga County Commission, from left to right, commissioners David Blust, Vince Gable, and Nathan Miller.

Flushing the Tea?

A Republican Party purge of Teapublicans coming if Obama wins? Personally, we doubt it. Wouldn't leave enough of a party to keep the lights on.

Ignorance CAN Kill

The Winston-Salem Journal takes on the anti-science know-nothingism of the Republicans in the NC General Assembly, which decided, by virtue of statute, that our low-lying coastal counties are prohibited -- prohibited -- from planning for sea-level rise.

Another by-product of Tea Party extremism, as the Journal editorialist correctly divines:

Tea-party Republicans put the environmental movement and climate science on the wrong side of the culture war that is gripping the United States. Therefore, they refuse to recognize that the planet is getting warmer, seas are rising accordingly, and man is playing a part in both. It matters not that the vast majority of real scientists provide hard data to support their projections. To the tea drinkers, facts and science don't count, only anger at the left does. 

This would all be kind of humorous, in a Stephen Colbert sort of way, if so much didn't ride on sea-level-rise projections. They guide development along our beaches. The state and local jurisdictions have already allowed far too much construction along our hurricane-prone, sandbar-based coast. Now they are refusing to plan ahead for higher seas that will devastate investment on the coast.

For What It's Worth...

Duly noted ... the Tea Party crowing in NC House Dist. 6 that they beat the "Thom Tillis machine" out of Raleigh:

...it is highly likely that the biggest loser yesterday DownEast was Thom Tillis and his ambitions to be U. S. Senator. He stirred up a massive amount of passion with redistricting, ferry tolls and meddling in local primaries. Whether he can redeem himself among the GOP base will likely depend on how he operates going forward and particularly going into November. If he and his staff continue to blunder as they have over the last year it is possible that the GOP may lose its majority in the House. That's how upset many grassroots Republicans and unaffiliated voters are.

Meanwhile, the Ultimate Tea Partier John Tedesco, the under-educated and over-caffeinated former member of the Wake County School Board, won the second Republican primary yesterday to run against State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson. Apparently, Mr. Tedesco's forestalled plans to dismantle Raleigh's school system only fueled his ambition to dismantle the entire State of North Carolina's school system. Meanwhile, Mr. Tedesco's Center for Education Reform appears to be mainly a website meant to support Mr. Tedesco.

The Tea Party did less well in other second primary races. For example, Richard Hudson won against dentist Scott Keadle in the 8th Congressional District. Hudson will now face incumbent Dem Larry Kissell. Keadle was extravagantly backed by the Club for Growth, which reportedly poured over $700,000 into his campaign. Keadle now has the distinction (call it the "Vernon Robinson Halo") of being a three-time Congressional loser, in three different Congressional districts.

Retiring Congresswoman Sue Myrick's baby boy Dan Forrest won against Tony Gurley for the Republican Lt. Gov. nomination. Gurley will presumably go back to being a Wake County commissioner.

Ashe County Crack-Pot Politics

Not to be missed ... this account of the Ashe County Tea Party and the politics of discrimination against The Gayz. And, welcome back on-line, Ashe Watch.