Conservative Activists Kicked Out of Haywood County Republican Party

“The Haywood Five” pose with cutouts
of former vice presidential candidate and
Alaskan governor Sarah Palin and President
Donald Trump at the Haywood Republican
Alliance headquarters. From left: Monroe Miller,
Richard West, Eddie Cabe, Paul Yeager and Jeremy Davis.
Photo Haywood Republican Alliance

When's the last time you've heard of party activists -- of either major political party -- getting drummed out of the corps? Well, actually, the Watauga Republican Party has indulged in some freelance purification rites, but it never got to the level it reached in Raleigh recently, with a "trial" for party disloyalty and a resulting ban against some Haywood County gentlemen from holding party offices "for three to five years."

The state's Republican Executive Committee, comprised of Republicans from across the state, convened a star chamber enclave in Raleigh on Saturday that essentially threw the men out of the GOP, though the proceedings were secret and not many people are talking about it ... except for the five notorious conservatives themselves who've started their own rump organization (the Haywood Republican Alliance) and are planning a big mock celebration, a "Party Disloyalty Party."

The allegations against the men mainly center on their support in 2016 of a conservative Democrat over an incumbent Republican Haywood commissioner, to the extent of doctoring slate cards given out at polling places. (For the record, the conservative Democrat came in dead last in polling while the targeted Republican incumbent, apparently a horrible "moderate," kept his seat). The Haywood Five were also accused of being generally disagreeable and disruptive characters who had hyper-sensitive noses for "RINOs" (Republicans In Name Only).

By implication, they're also "not normal." According to the Haywood Republican Party Chair, who brought the charges against the five, “That’s why I am doing this, is to get candidates to run for office who are normal everyday people,” he said. “When you have this kind of people in there, scrutinizing every move everybody makes and going after people that don’t agree with their warped agenda, you can’t get good people.”

The Pitiless Gaze of a Would-Be Trump Judge in NC

Thomas Alvin Farr. Photo Alex Brandon, AP

Thomas Farr, a Raleigh attorney with a voter suppression history, has been nominated by Trump to be a Federal district judge. This particular judgeship has been vacant for 11 years because Sen. Dick Burr blocked two different Obama nominees because they were black.

Farr was lead counsel for the Sen. Jesse Helms reelection campaign in 1990 when he was being challenged by former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, a black man.

According to former U.S. Attorney Gerald Hebert, who was a Department of Justice investigator in 1990, Farr was involved in a campaign plot during the Helms v. Gantt election to send 100,000 postcards to registered black voters alleging they were ineligible to vote and would be prosecuted if they tried. Gantt lost to Helms by a narrow margin (though Gantt carried Watauga County by a thousand votes).

Farr has denied that he knew anything about the voter intimidation scheme until after it happened, and that denial helped him win approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Farr is still awaiting approval by the full Senate. Both Dick Burr and Sen. Thom Tillis support him.

NewsandObserver reporter Thomas Goldsmith, who first broke the story of Farr's involvement in the intimidation back in 2009 (on the front page), is back today in The Weekly Independent, digging into Farr's attempt to mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee about his past.

"There's certainly a clear discrepancy between what Mr. Farr testified to under oath to the committee and what has and will be reported about his activities with Helms regarding voter suppression," said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice.

What's another lifetime appointment to the Federal bench? Oh, just another termite being given access to the floor joists.

Black Hat

One Republican who has come out as planning to run against Congresswoman Virginia Foxx in the 2018 Republican primary is Matthew Vera. I wrote about him before. Now I discover a second Republican looking to unseat Foxx, one Courtland J. Meader (some impressive name, that).

He actually declared his candidacy on August 11 on his Facebook page, describing himself as "a rock and roll loud mouth bad ass Republican that's going to shift shape in Washington." Okay, I get the loud mouth and bad ass parts, but a shape-shifter? That kind of means we can't trust where he stands right now and that once he gets to Washington, he'll be changing shapes. Or else I don't know how to read English.

His Facebook page, like his photograph, suggests a braggart who might be more hat than cattle. Apparently, he has THE solution to Obamacare which will change the world and wow the millennials and save money and redeem the irredeemably poor and cure the heartbreak of psoriasis. He's big on bragging and thin on detail. It's just gonna be a miracle, and you'll have take his word for it.

He's going to beat Virginia, evidently, by essentially melding into her, but to be honest I'm not sure he's actually ever met the Madam:

Virginia is a sweet, endearing woman, but she has also become a career politician with little interest in making big changes and battling the very well organized loud mouth liberal Democrats in this nation. Respectfully, at her age she just doesn't even have the moxy for it. We are on the same side technically, and I wish to stay as far away from denigrating Rep. Foxx as I can, because she is a decent person - but I also know it's time to hand over the baton. Her time has been, my time has come. [italics added only where amazement broke out]

Some times he veers left on Facebook:

Basing our healthcare on whether the insurance industry can turn a profit or not is a major problem .... Cost cutting on the patient's and the healthcare worker's backs is also a major problem.

I'm on my way to cheering him for that, but then he defines his Republicanism in a very curious way:

I'm a member of the Republican party for my own reasons, but they do not rule over or create my political or social views. My policies are problem solving and absolutely non-partisan, as they address and solve problems - not worry about which side believes what or desires whatever. My policies are for the people.

"For my own reasons"? What does that mean? Republicans "do not rule over my social views." Great! if I understand what you mean. But how does that square with "bad ass Republican"? I'm confused.

Getting a clear policy position out of Courtland J. Meader is going to take a bit more research.

Gorka Sees the Future, and You're Not in It

Sebastian Gorka, Trump's former White House Lucifer-lookalike, told an auditorium full of College Republicans last night in Chapel Hill that he predicted and firmly believed that Trump will complete eight years in the presidency and will be followed by eight years of Mike Pence. The students cheered. According to the News and Observer, there were about 200 in the room.

I love political prognosticators. They make my corpuscles bunch and run. I listen to them avidly and read their opinions wherever I can find them, and then if they're writers, I want to see what they look like and whether I can take what they predict as possible. Or anyways likely. Or merely self-congratulatory fantasy based on living in a box.

Gorka is not clothed in credibility. He's all about macho dominance of perceived enemies. He famously bragged about Trump, “the alpha males are back,” and he itched to give Islam -- the whole religion apparently -- some alpha male comeuppance. He was in on drafting the first Muslim ban. He was and still is a satellite of Steve Bannon and a regular contributor to Breitbart News. He had an ill-defined job in the White House -- like Omarosa -- and new Chief of Staff John Kelly got rid of him on August 25, 2017.

Gorka wrote a "resignation letter" that was excerpted in The Federalist. It's a "kiss my white ass!" directed at John Kelly:

“given recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House. As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

So Gorka tells the students in Chapel Hill last night that he wasn't fired. He resigned. And then predicted an Era of Trump/Pence. He described Trump as “Kryptonite to political correctness” and an “unstoppable steam locomotive.” Macho authoritarianism? Yes indeedy, there's authoritarianism, but it's all coming from the Middle East, or from anyplace Muslims are in the majority. Trump is, in essence, an alpha male saving the race.

What a time we live in! Members of churches all over Alabama have become winkers at child molestation, perhaps in concert with also thinking Trump was divinely appointed to the job. Trump has finally bullied Sessions into pursuing Hillary Clinton with a Special Prosecutor, and the president just appointed his lawyer's husband to a federal judgeship (in Alabama, no less), a man who only became a lawyer three years ago and has never tried a case and has a social media history that strongly suggests he lacks a judicial temperament, and oops! he failed to tell Congress he has a conflict of interest with the Trump White House.

So in such a whirling world, Gorka predicts 16 years of Trump/Pence. I ask you, in a world so warped, who can confidently prognosticate otherwise? (Though my corpuscles are telling me another story altogether.)

Ready To Say It Out Loud: I'm Relieved Hillary Lost

By November 8th last fall, I was secretly thinking what I could not utter to another living soul: It might be better for the Democratic Party if Hillary lost.

Why?

1. Hillary would have been under constant and threatening investigation by two houses of Congress. Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- would be getting passed if Hillary suggested it or wanted it or -- Heaven forbid! -- needed it. I dreaded the ferocious feeding frenzy that a Hillary presidency would serve up for Republicans, red in tooth and claw.

2. The Democratic Party would continue its slide, defending her. Long range, who would look forward to Hillary's first mid-term Congressional elections? Jeebus!

3. With Trump, we get a rejuvenating backlash from Democrats and by Democrats and for Democrats. Decent people everywhere -- but especially in the suburbs -- suddenly discover what they never realized before -- that they want Democrats to win. Cutting off Hillary was like pruning a puny tree in the spring: new growth springs forth.

4. The election of Trump galvanized a whole new troop of non-professional office-seekers who stepped forward and have ideas that are good ideas and who aren't beholden. A national Big Thumb of the establishment Democratic Party doesn't squelch them because it's in disarray, arguing over who to blame for Hillary's loss.

5. Trump is the death of the Republican Party. What replaces it? Maybe the Trump Party, or several different parties arguing over who has to pick up the tab for the last four years. If it's to be the Trump Party, we can watch it collapse rapidly into a chain of Beauty Pageant Accessories and Gun Stores

Said the Carpenter to the Butterfly, "Wanna See My Joist?"

Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News

Alabama voters, at least until yesterday, considered Roy Moore a Christian soldier, and he has played the part with gusto. He published a book in 2009, "So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom," in which he's the hero and the Scourge of God, whipping the sexual misdeeds and perversions of other men according to the Holy Word of God, and pushing a couple of tons of Ten Commandments uphill against an American culture that has gone to the Devil.

Apparently in Alabama, good Christian soldiers are expected to indulge in a little pedofilia. That's at least the view of one high-ranking Alabama public official.

(We just got around to reading the Washington Post investigative piece that exposes Moore's past behavior with girls as young as 14. It's convincingly detailed. The main accuser, the at-the-time 14-year-old Leigh Corfman, was a Trump voter in 2016, so Moore's screaming it's all a Democratic Party plot rings a hollow gong.)

Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler heard about Moore showing off through white cotton undies his stiff dick to a prepubescent girl, and Ziegler shook if off as normal. He was quoted by the Washington Examiner: "Much ado about nothing," he said. “There is nothing to see here.” (He really said that!) “The allegations are that a man in his early 30s dated teenage girls. Even the Washington Post report says that he never had sexual intercourse with any of the girls and never attempted [?] sexual intercourse."

Then Ziegler actually turned to Scripture to defend Moore:

“Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

“There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here,” Ziegler concluded. “Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

As Judge Judy would say, "Miss Alabama, you picked him! You pay!"

How Stupid Does He Think We Are?

“The deal [Republican tax revenge] is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something.”

— President Trump, in reported comments to Senate Democrats, Nov. 7, 2017

What's Gonna Be Worse in 2018: Being Oblivious Or Living With Reality?

An interview with Congresswoman Virginia Foxx in the Washington Examiner produced these direct quotes about what happened on Tuesday:

What She Said
"I don't think elections in the House of Delegates is directly comparable to what might happen in the Congress of the United States .... I feel pretty comfortable about our winning in 2018."

What She Meant

Comparisons are odorous, or don't you know your Milton?

......

What She Said

"If you want to portray this as a severe loss, you can find examples to do that."

What She Meant
If you wanna be a dickhead about it.

.......

What She Said

"If you want to portray it as a not-so-severe loss, you can find examples to do that."

What She Meant

Do you have any idea whatsoever how flexible I am. Why, I can bend over backwards and touch my nose to the backs of my calves.

......

What She Said

"It's like a Chinese menu: You pick two from column one and three from column two."

What She Meant

I put my derp in my derp with my other derp.

Unsealing the Signs of November: The Rise of the Suburbs

On Tuesday, the ground moved. (And you picked a hell of a time to go on the road and offline, Williamson!)

So ... catching up with the new landscape:

1. Virginia. The wealthy suburbs -- all those commuting soccer moms and commuting executive-potential dads, right? They turned to Democrats and turned away from Republicans in such surprising droves that polling was totally flummoxed. Who knew those people (the Republican Lite) were going to vote at all? They often don't vote in off-years, but this year they couldn't wait, and it was going to be bad for Republicans. Those people in the suburbs in Virginia and elsewhere, according to Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin -- who've got money and who may be registered Independents but who've been voting Republican for years out of a multitude of motives -- those are the voters to watch. They like Trump not. It was the Virginia suburbs that gave Democrat Ralph Northam his 9-point victory for governor last night.

Not just the governor -- and maybe not even most importantly the governor, but also a surge for Democrats down the ballot, especially the House of Delegates. Winning Democratic candidates included a woman who immigrated from Peru, a female refugee from Vietnam, an openly gay woman, and a transgender woman. Many of the ousted Republicans were white men who had held office for years. The transgender woman, Danica Roem, beat a 25-year Republican veteran who called himself the Chief Homophobe in Virginia.

At one point yesterday it still seemed that Democrats might have taken control of the House of Delegates, which has been Republican for eons. Democrats needed 17 pick-ups to take the majority, and so far they apparently have at least 15, with re-counts going on in several other close races. The consensus now is that probably, after the recounts, Republicans will retain control by a hairsbreadth, 51-49. Worst case scenario for Democrats: Republicans had a near-death experience, and Northam's vetoes will be upheld.

Virginia was gerrymandered, much like North Carolina was, to make the Republican majority virtually unassailable, but Democrats stormed the citadel, and all things are possible for she who trusts in the Lord.

2. Washington state. Via a special election, Democrats took majority control of the Washington state Senate. Chris Vance, a former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, blamed Trump: “Among college-educated suburbanites, he is a pariah.”

3. Pennsylvania. "Pushing the message that a vote for them was a vote against President Trump, Delaware County Democrats out-polled Republicans in a County Council election for the first time in history, winning both seats up for grabs in an ultra-tight race." Delaware County was said to be under the thumb of "a fearsome Republican machine." (Philadelphia Inquirer) Machine broke, boss.

Democrats "surprised themselves" by scooping up local offices throughout the Philadelphia suburbs and easily holding city halls in places where the party suffered last year, like Erie and Scranton.

4. Georgia. Georgia Democrats captured two state House seats where they previously had not even fielded candidates, while also snatching a State Senate seat in Buckhead, an upscale area of Atlanta. See ... suburbs. I think we're seeing a trend line. 

5. New Jersey. Democrat Phil Murphy will follow Christie into the Governor's Mansion. Murphy "carried the densely populated New York and Philadelphia suburbs by staggering margins, including counties that broke for Gov. Chris Christie eight years ago." (NYTimes) 

In an upset, Ashley Bennett defeated Republican John Carman for a seat on the Atlantic County board. Carman had cracked wise during the Women’s March in Washington on January 21, posting a meme on Facebook -- a picture of a harried young woman, cooking over a stove, with the text asking, "Will she be home [from the March] in time to cook dinner?" Ashley Bennett, who whipped Carman's butt, saw that Facebook post, was outraged, and decided to run. She won, and she's a first-time candidate, a hospital employee, and black.

New Jersey Democrats also took back Atlantic City and broke Republican hold on Parsippany, "the sort of suburb where the Trump backlash has brought Democrats from the fringe to contention" (Dave Weigel).

6. Montana. In Helena, Wilmot Collins, a refugee from Liberia, became the first black mayor. He's a Democrat. 

7. Colorado. Democrat Crystal Murillo won a Republican-held city council seat in Aurora, a suburb of Denver.

8. New Hampshire. For the first time in 14 years, Democrats seized control of the state’s biggest city, making Joyce Craig the first female mayor of Manchester.

9. Maine. Maine voters overwhelming approved an expansion of Medicaid "in a sharp rebuke of Republican governor and early Trump supporter Paul LePage, who vetoed the legislation no less than five times." (LePage plays a real gargoyle. He vowed yesterday to continue blocking the expansion.)

10. North Carolina. Fayetteville voters flipped their mayor from Republican to Democrat, and Charlotte now has its first black woman mayor.

"In the Apex Town Council contest, former Pat McCrory spokesman and HB2 defender Graham Wilson, finished dead last of five candidates. Fellow Republican David Hooks finished fourth. The three victors—Nicole Dozier, Brent Gantt, and Audra Killingsworth, were all endorsed by the Wake Dems. Maybe Paul Stam’s clout in his hometown is waning." (Jeffrey C. Billman The Weekly Independent)


People ask what happened in the Boone Town Council races. This happened: