The Long View

Still trying to assess the failure of the Watauga County GOP to field a team.

According to the officials at the Board of Elections, it’s totally unprecedented for one of the two major parties to simply have no candidates whatsoever for the County Commission, since that body is THE major policy-making, tax-extracting, law-writing board for the whole county and for everything that goes on in it.

Plus (and after all), Republicans greatly out-number Democrats in Watauga County. According to the most recent statistics from the State Board of Elections, there are 14,705 registered Republicans in Watauga vs. 12,359 Democrats.

But it’s not as though Republican Party officials didn’t try. We’ve heard a figure as high as 100 ... the number of potential Republican candidates who were contacted, wooed, cajoled, and/or threatened. And yet party leaders came up dry.

Comment writers down-column are speculating on why. The Boone Town Council elections last fall might have something to do with it. But more likely, it’s just plain old vanilla Zeitgeist. We have heard it said by our elders in politics that “This is gonna be a Democratic year.” Gonna be, and obviously already IS. The harsh winds of public rejection are blowing sand in Republican eyes, and even the best potential local candidates couldn’t see their way forward against that gale.

But not even to try ... seems extreme. It’s a gesture of giving up, so public and so abject, that it’s going to take one of two things to recover Republican “face”: either (a) several more election cycles while the Republicans try to rebuild and the Democrats manage to screw up or (b) a revolution in the leadership of the Watauga County Republican Party. Option “b” would be the fastest way to regeneration, but also the most bruising to certain old lizards who’ve been sunning themselves for decades in the warm glow of their own esteem. There are now MANY forward-looking, energetic Republicans with a head on their shoulders and good ideas. The problem is that many of them aren’t natives, don’t own the old family names, and they’re not regularly invited into the inner circle of power – which has been a very tight, small circle for years.

Whatever they do, the Republicans need to do it soon. Frankly, my dears, I don’t like this no–show situation for the future health of our democracy. In a two-party system, there actually needs to be two parties, and the first requirement is actually showing up. And speaking up, and challenging, and arguing, and campaigning. That sort of give and take is what keeps ideas and political parties honest. One-party government is the first step toward smugness, arrogance, and corruption. I want an opponent, an actual opponent who makes me think carefully about my choices.

FLASH: Local Republican Party Collapses, Fields Zero Candidates for County Commission

Filing has ended with the local Republican Party fielding no candidates whatsoever for the three seats on the Watauga County Commission.

WTF?

That's throwing in the towel in about the most dramatic way imaginable.

Also filed before noon, for the school board ... Joni (Joan Gray) Horine, a Democrat.

Gonna Need a New Frock for This!

Get out your high-heel sneakers!

Got our invitation last night to the joint Virginia Foxx/Liddy Dole fundraiser at the Cross Creek Country Club in Mount Airy on March 19th (Prayer Meeting night, but what's ideological devotion without a few sacrifices?).

(Okay, we didn't exactly receive the invitation ourselves, so much as we got it forwarded from an actual invitee, who knew how much we'd enjoy the experience, vicariously.)

Anyway, the invitation says we can sign on as a "host" for $2,000 and get our mugs photographed with the Grande Dames Themselves, or pay $1,000 as a "co-host" (no photo op offered), or we can fork over as little as $125 for the "general reception" to be one of a cast of thousands of panic-stricken extras trying to get at the cold luncheon meats.

How much are we willing to pay to be so near such transcendence?

Oh, almost forgot the icing on the cake, as it were, the Viagra in our seltzer: Special Guest, Senator Robert Dole.

Last Day of Candidate Filing

Expect the lines to form at the Board of Elections between now and noon, the last possible minute to file to run for office in Watauga County. For one thing, the Republicans have so far filed zero candidates to run for any of the three County Commission seats.

Filing yesterday for school board was David Albert Ward, who is quite well known in the Bethel community for advocating aggressively for prayer in schools. A David Blust recruit?

Filing this morning for the seat on the County Commission being vacated by Mary Moretz is Tim Futrelle, 33, the Democratic vice chair of the Boone 1 precinct. Doug McGuinn filed yesterday for the same seat, so there will be a Democratic primary for that slot on May 6th.

Stay tuned for further updates on the electoral landscape in Watauga County.

Foxx Hunt

Another of Madam Foxx's constituents bites back. So, ya see, we ain't the only rude voters in the Fifth District.

The Low Road, Meet Mayor McCrory

We've been wondering how Jack Hawke would remake Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory as a conservative extreme enough to satisfy N.C. Republicans in the upcoming primary, and now we have some evidence that it's going to be illegal immigrants -- dirty, filty, criminal, baby-boiling, sex-crazed -- immigrants, ALL THE TIME, who are going to supply the character make-over.

When he first filed, we said we were surprised that we didn't see anything about Mexicans.

That was then.

Now McCrocy is all about "security" and targeting "gang members" and building enough prison space in NC to house the approximate population of Chihuahua and driving immigrants into the Atlantic surf.

We got it.

Like, Wow

There ought to be a joke in here somewhere ("How can you tell when you've got enough lawyers?"), but the Pope Center for Higher Education Policies, another of those subsidiaries of The Pope Kingdom, says that North Carolina is "under-lawyered." Translation: we ain't got enough!

Uh-huh.

Under the Dome made the first catch.

Everything That Rises Must Converge?

First we see, on BlueNC, that Elizabeth Dole is in trouble -- and it IS trouble when your approval rating is dipping this far below 50% -- and then we see that Dole's supposed leading Democratic opponent, state Sen. Kay Hagan, currently polling in the low zeroes, hires a campaign manager who instantly manages to piss off the press.

Is this what you call "confluence"?

The now quite dotty U.S. Senator vs. the Bush-lite state senator who sees some good in domestic spying. At least Hagan's new campaign manager brings comic timing to the event!

For other Democrats running in the May 6th primary, consult the complete list here.

"Undisciplined Messaging"

News leaks this a.m. at Politico.com that big-wig Republicans are hurriedly trying to figure out how to run against Obama and/or Clinton without falling into racist and/or sexist language/jokes/prejudices ... since, you know, the national Republican party has something of an image problem in those particular areas. "GOP operatives have already coined a term for clumsy rhetoric: 'undisciplined messaging.' "

So the party is circulating a PowerPoint presentation to its party leaders and operatives, urging them to exercise caution in the way they go after the likely Democratic nominee this year.

Too late ... as it turns out, for the leading Republican voice in Watauga County, where messaging like this about Obama (get a load of that picture, meant to represent exactly WHAT about Obama?) and this about Clinton (or about that portion of the human race "afflicted by estrogen").

Winning hearts and minds on the local level!