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National Republicans
Gary Pearce posted on May 15, 2013 09:55
You can easily flick aside a Republican witch hunt on Benghazi. After all, they’ve been at it since Mitt Romney popped off the first day.
You can manage a controversy about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups – so long as, unlike Nixon, the White House wasn’t involved.
But your Justice Department subpoenaed AP reporters’ phone records? Now you’ve got a real problem.
Now you’ve made reporters and editors mad. Now they’ll plunge into an orgy of Nixon comparisons and “second-term jinx” stories. Now they’ll cover all the congressional investigations and hearings into all of the above.
This too, you can manage. But you may have to chop off some heads. And you must keep calm and carry on.
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Gary Pearce posted on May 07, 2013 16:37
The trouble with South Carolina, Robert E. Lee supposedly said, is that it’s too small to be an independent nation and too large to be an insane asylum. Which helps explain why Mark Sanford may win his congressional race tonight.
The other explanation is our politics today. We are so deeply and bitterly divided into our respective tribes that no amount of bizarre behavior will keep us from voting for our tribe’s candidate.
And we Democrats shouldn’t throw stones. We stuck by President Clinton after his less-than-exemplary behavior in the White House. (Good thing we did.)
Of course, Clinton didn’t approach Sanford’s level of sheer nuttiness (See: “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” and “Argentine Soul Mate”.) But, hey, we’re talking South Carolina here.
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Carter Wrenn posted on April 30, 2013 10:10
Up in Washington, Senate Leader Harry Reid and House Leader John Boehner and a handful of politicians have been sequestered in secret meetings, trying to agree on a solution to one of Washington’s most burning problems: How to exempt Congressmen and their staffs from ObamaCare.
Then, to their surprise, word of the meetings leaked – landing on the front page of Politico – and in the next breath, facing an awkward question and needing a quick explanation, the politicians stumbled, sheepishly telling the press they were worried about putting their staffers under ObamaCare because it would lead to a ‘brain drain’ on Capitol Hill – and, of course, one wit immediately wrote the newspaper, How could that be? There hasn’t been a glimmer of a brain on Capitol Hill for years.
Next Politico treed Democratic House Leader, Steny Hoyer, asking where he stood on exempting Congress from ObamaCare – like a man weaving through a minefield Hoyer put out a carefully scripted statement saying he was studying “all the policies in the Affordable Care Act, to ensure they’re being implemented in a way that’s workable for everyone, including members and staff.”
After cornering the Democrat next Politico descended on John Boehner and Boehner’s spokesman, with equal care, announced, “If the Speaker has the opportunity to save anyone from ObamaCare, he will.”
What those two bits of carefully parsed political-ese meant – when translated into plain English – was simple enough: Both Hoyer and Boehner had said Yes.
So in all the great breadth and sweep of America, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters, one sacred patch of ground may be untouched by ObamaCare – Capitol Hill.
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Carter Wrenn posted on April 26, 2013 09:29
A legislator looked at a bill, winched, looked at another legislator and said, ‘Well, if I don’t vote for it I guess I’ll land in a primary.’
‘You think,’ the second legislator said, ‘that Republicans in your district are for people carrying guns in bars?’ The bill allowed people carry guns in bars, restaurants and on college campuses (as long as the gun is in a locked box).
‘Looking at the emails I’m getting,’ the first legislator said, ‘I’d say they do.’
‘How many emails are you talking about?’
‘Over a hundred.’
‘And how many Republican voters are in your district?’
‘About 20,000.’
‘So, because you got a hundred emails, you think you’re hearing the voice of 20,000 Republicans saying they support people carrying pistols in bars?’
The first legislator bristled. ‘You think that’s wrong?’
‘I think if you want to know what voters think you should take a poll.’
The first legislator, his mind made up, scratched his head. ‘You ever try that?’
‘Yep.’
‘What did it show?’
‘It said Republican voters have more common sense than legislators give them credit for.’
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Carter Wrenn posted on April 17, 2013 11:44
Last week Gary thoughtfully wrote a squib (below) urging people to visit young Thomas Mills’ new website PoliticsNC – so I did. And got a surprise. Young Mr. Mills was – genially – taking me to task for writing how the Democrats passing voter laws (over the years) to elect Democrats, had led to Republicans (once they had power) doing the same thing to elect Republicans, which, taken altogether, was a pretty good example of how one sin begets another – the political version of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with no remorse anywhere.
Mr. Mills didn’t mind me criticizing my own party but he didn’t particularly like me criticizing his party – the way he sees it, Republicans have done all the sinning while Democrats have done none at all. He made his case this way: Republicans are trying to pass laws that discourage people from voting while the Democrats, back in the days when they had power, had pursued a loftier goal: They’d passed laws to encourage more people to vote. Which sounds fine. Except that argument collapses in the face of one fact: Right in the middle of their lofty crusade to get more people to the polls, Democrats passed a law to make it more difficult for people to cast absentee ballots – because Republicans were more likely to vote that way than Democrats.
There’re other examples of Democrats changing laws to elect Democrats – like in the 1980 election: Locked in a tight race for US Senate, Democrats decided if a voter marked the block next to Republican John East’s name in the race for U.S. Senate, but, then, also marked the Straight Democratic ticket block on the same ballot, they wouldn’t throw the ballot out as spoiled – they’d count it as a vote for Democratic Senate candidate Robert Morgan.
Toward the end of his blog, Mr. Mills wrote, “Carter should know politics is about perception and the perception here is...” – well, the perception here is Republicans are “old, bigoted white guys.”
I don’t know of an idea that has done more harm in politics than the thought, Perception is what matters...it’s like saying, If I lie, cheat and steal, it doesn’t matter so long as people think I’m a walking breathing paragon of moral rectitude.
There's also an easy way to prove it’s a fiction to say ‘perception’ has the power to save a politician from the older truth that bad deeds breed consequences – just look at what’s happening in front of our eyes (over voter laws): Democrats sowed the wind and now they’re reaping the whirlwind and, in time, Republicans may reap an indigestible harvest as well.
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Carter Wrenn posted on April 16, 2013 10:32
For years Jesse Helms wrote every speech he made, typing each on an old reporter’s typewriter, then one year when he was unusually harried he decided it was time to hire a speechwriter – so we hired ‘John.’
John was an unusually gifted writer but for all his virtues he had a peculiar view of politics (and the world in general). John saw politics as one tiny pinnacle of pure white light populated with saints, surrounded by a pitch-black engulfing darkness filled with goblins and liberals who had to be exterminated and, since the saints were badly outnumbered, the way John saw it there was no room for the luxury mercy.
Of course the fearfulness of his vision meant he was angry a great part of the time and naturally, over time, his anger turned him mean.
For six months John diligently labored writing passionate and articulate speeches for Jesse then one day in December, as we walked to my car to go to lunch, John handed Jesse a speech and launched into a tirade about Christmas – he said Christmas was a greed-ridden desecration of the story of the Christ child, an abomination reeking of materialism, then tore into Santa Claus, saying Santa Claus was a hobgoblin invented by greedy shopkeepers to con little children – then he stepped in front of Jesse, turned to face him, and said, Somebody needs to stand up and tell those children the truth about Santa Claus – and pointed to that speech.
Not with the white-hot passion (born of fear or betrayal or meanness) of a common murderer but with the cold-calculated passion of a Grand Inquisitor ticking off the names of heretics John had proposed the murder of St. Nicholas.
Jesse stopped dead in his tracks, rocked back on his heels, looked back at John, and grinned, Well, if you don’t mind, I believe I’d as soon pass on running for the Senate by telling children there’s no Santa Claus.
Back in those days you could usually find a fellow like John in almost every town of any size but given the limits of geography and communications in those days it was nearly impossible for John to find (or share fellowship with) his natural political soul mates. He was sadly isolated and fought his political battles alone.
John passed on a decade ago but today his lineal descendents (not in blood but in politics) are happier because they’re no longer alone – modern day Johns build websites then with the click of a button other ‘Johns’ can find them and they form a tribe as bellicose as Huns.
The other day, without meaning to, a soft-spoken lady from Charlotte who’s one of the four Republican leaders in the House – Representative Ruth Samuelson – sent one of those Hun-tribes into a white-hot fury.
Back to 2007 a previous state legislature passed a bill to encourage companies to produce ‘renewable energy’ – like solar power – in North Carolina; hardly a word has been said about the bill for six years, until last week when State Representative Mike Hager stood up in a House Committee and announced that utility companies using solar power was adding millions of dollars to electric bills and he was going to put a stop to it by repealing that six-year-old bill.
Those two words – renewable energy – reverberated across the Internet with the power of a magnet and hit a tribe of Johns right squarely between the eyes. Because the one person they knew who favored renewable energy was Barack Obama. And that’s all they needed to know. No sooner had Mike Hager sounded the war tocsin than a full-throated battle cry filled the air and charges flew about the evil of government subsidies and the worse evil of government interfering with the free market – which in a way didn’t add up because utility companies are monopolies and there is no free market for selling electricity.
Then just when it looked like Representative Hager’s bill was sure to sail through that committee Ruth Samuelson stood up and politely said that it might be a good idea for legislators to stop and do a little research before voting.
About an hour after that one Hun-like tribe put a picture of Samuelson and a picture of another Republican legislator on its website alongside a picture of Obama then added a headline over the pictures roaring: They voted with Obama!
The way that tribe saw it Ruth Samuelson had gone over to the Dark Side or, worse, become a liberal – which didn’t add up either because how on earth could an Obama-liberal be one of the four Republican Leaders in the State House?
So I looked up that 2007 bill and an odd fact popped up right away: George Bush was President when that bill passed. Then a second fact leaped off the page: The most rock-ribbed conservative in the legislature, Phil Berger, had voted for that bill. As had Thom Tillis, Tom Apodaca, Skip Stam, Robert Pittenger and just about every other Republican in the General Assembly.
Whether that Hun-like tribe’s attack on Ruth Samuelson was cold-blooded calculation or hot-blooded rage there’s no getting around one more fact: It was an act of pure meanness – like when John told Jesse, You ought to tell little children there is no Santa Claus.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 25, 2013 10:36
There’s nothing political folks like better than a good Civil War – whether you happen to be a Republican or a Democrat it’s hard to find a pogrom more satisfying than purging the heretics in your own party, which is not necessarily an unproductive experience: After all, Reagan’s victory in 1980 was the result of a five year Republican Civil War.
The first sign that the everyday normal bumps and grinds of Republican politics might break into open warfare came when John McCain branded Rand Paul and Ted Cruz ‘Wacko Birds.’ That set the stage for Round 2 when the ‘Wacko Birds’ met the ‘Old Birds’ eye-to-eye at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
At forty-one Senator Marco Rubio is a pretty unusual standard bearer for the Old Birds. A Cuban immigrant’s son who needed an opportunity and got one, Senator Rubio pulled himself up by his bootstraps. At twenty-eight, he ran for the Florida Legislature and quickly became a ‘rising star.’ He walked onto the stage at CPAC and gave an earnest, smooth, passionate speech about American exceptionalism. He was articulate. But cautious. He crossed swords with no one.
Next a tousle-haired fifty-year-old wearing a dark blue jacket and blue jeans, looking like a college professor, walked onto the stage and he wasn’t smooth at all. Or cautious. With wry humor Rand Paul poked fun at Obama for saying he had to cancel White House tours for schoolchildren due to a lack of money but, then, three days later, sending $250 million to Egypt in foreign aid. After quoting Lincoln, Montesquieu and Lewis Carroll’s ‘White Queen,’ Paul turned his wit on the Old Birds, saying the Republican Establishment ‘has grown stale and covered with moss.’
Paul went on to win the straw poll at CPAC.
Now, that’s not a sure sign the Wacko Birds will pluck the Old Birds.
But it is a sure sign the Civil War has started.
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Carter Wrenn posted on March 22, 2013 10:38
A pair of ‘grassroots organizers,’ Jessica Laurenz and Sean Kosofsky, took a poll, found three issues, and wrote a plan. Neither had ever run a major statewide campaign and they lacked money and a voice but they had passion and zeal and sailed into uncharted waters to breathe life back into the moribund Democratic Party – then some malevolent genie leaked their ‘secret plan’ to the Charlotte Observer and all hell broke loose.
Sean Kosofsky took the first hit – the newspapers reported his plan, then they said his group (Blueprint NC) could not legally spend money to elect Democrats, then a foundation (headed by a former Democratic legislator) that had given his group $400,000 blasted Kosofsky, then the State Republican Party filed complaints against Kosofsky with the IRS and the State Board of Elections for violating election laws.
Kosofsky was in hot water up to his chin when Jennifer Laurenz stepped in and saved him. She, she told the newspapers, had written the plan – she was to blame.
Then Laurenz fell prey to unforgiving politics too.
A longtime Democratic State Representative whose son works for Laurenz at America Votes NC, walked into a press conference and when a reporter asked him about Laurenz’s plan he could have said Laurenz was a well-meaning but inexperienced young woman. Or that young people sometimes get carried away by their passions and that’s unfortunate but it’s understandable. Instead, before the cock crowed thrice, he threw Laurenz under the bus – he said he knew nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing but what he’d read in the newspapers. It was like he’d never heard of the young woman his son works with.
Young Sean Kosofsky and Jessica Laurenz sailed into unchartered waters with more passion than prudence then the newspapers descended on them, then the Republicans descended on them, then their friends – the people they meant to help – abandoned them.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 22, 2013 08:36
The vote is a powerful thing. In less than a year, it has taken immigrants from pariah to power in American politics.
This week, Tea Party centerfold Rand Paul softened his position on immigration. (Remember when Mitt Romney called for “self-deportation”?) Paul’s 2016 rival Marco Rubio – and other Republicans – had already beat a retreat.
And one of the legislature’s red-hots who wants to take a big stick to immigrants talked a bit more softly. Rep. Mark Brody of Monroe said: “I know the Hispanic community was pretty upset. Everybody needs to be treated with respect.”
Especially when they vote.
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Gary Pearce posted on March 19, 2013 10:06
Senator Phil Berger says national Republicans have a messenger problem, not a message problem. Democrats might well hope he believes that.
After attending CPAC – the right-wing Woodstock – Berger told Travis Fain at the Greensboro News & Record: “It’s not just a communication problem. Sometimes it’s the individual messengers ... (and) some folks who lend themselves to caricature.”
Berger said Republican policies “are supported by a broad spectrum of people.” And he liked this assessment by Texas Gov. Rick Perry:
“The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two presidential elections. That’s what they think. That’s what they say. That might be true, if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.”
Now for a completely different view – from a Democrat who helped rescue his party from its ideological death spiral in the 1980s and 1990s. Will Marshall, who started the Democratic Leadership Council that led to Bill Clinton that led to a Democratic revival, writes in the Daily Beast that Republicans today are where Democrats were then: caught in “the politics of evasion. They know their electoral base is shrinking, but only a few have connected the dots between their demographic quandary and their ideological stridency….
“Angry extremists have hijacked the party, and someone is going to have to wrest it away from them. If the New Democrats’ experience is any guide, there will be blood.”
Marshall says “the key difference between Democrats in 1989 and Republicans in 2013 (is that) the DLC spoke to, and for, a Democratic rank and file that was considerably more moderate than the party establishment. For Republicans, however, the ‘base’ is the problem, not the solution. Radicalism rises from the grass roots. The Tea Party–Club for Growth axis is still eager to punish ideological deviation, threatening to ‘primary’ GOP officeholders who show the slightest inclination toward compromise. And it’s not just intimidation: thanks to a combination of geographic sorting and gerrymandering, many House Republicans can truthfully claim to be faithfully representing their constituents who sent them to Washington to pull down the Temple, not to do deals with Democrats. That’s why the House stands for now at least as the Proud Tower of unbending right-wing orthodoxy.
“Eventually it will fall—just as the Democrats’ House bastion fell in 1994. But it will probably take more GOP losses to convince conservatives that they need to build majorities within an actually existing America, not the America of their dreams.”
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Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The Charlotte Observer says: “Carter Wrenn and Gary Pearce don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. But they both love North Carolina and know its politics inside and out.”
Carter is a Republican.
Gary is a Democrat.
They met in 1984, during the epic U.S. Senate battle between Jesse Helms and Jim Hunt. Carter worked for Helms and Gary, for Hunt.
Years later, they became friends. They even worked together on some nonpolitical clients.
They enjoy talking about politics. So they started this blog in 2005.
They’re still talking. And they invite you to join the conversation.
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