north carolina republican party tv ad ties local candidates to jeremiah wright

Apr 24

I Wonder Who Kevin Bacon Endorses?

Posted by Patrick.Politics & Current Events Add comments

The people who lead the North Carolina branch of the Republican Party must feel dumbfounded. In a state that has voted for the Republican candidate for President in every election since 1976, where senators (with exceptions like John Edwards) tend to have an (R) by their names, where the national party could even boost a carpetbagger like Elizabeth Dole who has virtually no connection to the state into office, these people couldn’t win a statewide election for Sewer Commissioner. At the national level, it’s Republicans all the way. But with all of these advantages, statewide, Democrats control the major offices despite years of being painted as God-hating, affirmative-action endorsing Mondale liberals.

Perhaps the problem lies in the mirror.

Next monday the State Republican Party plans, before primary elections have even been held, to run a television ad titled “Extreme.” The message of the ad? That Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright has extreme views. That, therefore, Barack Obama has extreme views. And that, therefore, the two leading Democratic candidates for North Carolina governor, Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue, who have endorsed Obama for President, are too extreme for North Carolina.

I shit you not.

For those who don’t know anything about North Carolina politics, Richard Moore is the state treasurer, a position that primarily entails management of the state pension fund, bonds, and other investments. Moore has distinguished himself by smart investments of the sort favored by Wall Street Republicans and general stinginess with public money. Beverly Perdue, the lieutenant governor, is a rather inoffensive mediocrity who has distinguished herself by advocating promoting improvements to public schools and pushing to save military bases in the state.

Neither Moore nor Perdue is a longhaired radical. Both are on record supporting the death penalty, opposing gay marriage, and favoring other moderate to conservative legal/cultural positions of the sort endorsed by most southern governors of either party. Each could pass for a moderate Republican in a more liberal place.

This is why one or the other is likely to win the governor’s race in November. They behave, politically speaking, like grown-ups.

The ones who aren’t behaving like grown-ups lead the state Republican Party. This sort of “six degrees of separation” association is insulting and silly to any voter with a brain. Whatever one thinks of Barack Obama’s former minister, neither Moore nor Perdue has met him, or ever will. Likely neither has met Obama more than once or twice. Most assuredly neither believes that Israel builds bombs that are magnetically attracted to African-Americans, or that AIDS is a CIA plot. Instead, they that the sales tax should be raised half a cent to pay for commuter rail or something similarly unexciting. Which would be a worthy subject for debate.

But one can’t debate against a “nyah-nyah-nyah - Jeremiah Wright is your girlfriend” temper tantrum. One could point out that the Republican candidates for governor (who include fine people like Bob Orr, a former State Supreme Court justice, and Pat McCrory, who’s done great work as mayor of Charlotte) endorse John McCain, who is endorsed by George Bush, who is friends with Vladimir Putin, and therefore a vote for Pat McCrory is a vote for the KGB. Or one could say that Justice Orr associates with lawyers, and that famous trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs has been accused of defrauding a court in an insurance case, so a vote for Justice Orr is a vote for insurance fraud.

That won’t happen, because sober adults don’t play these games. John McCain himself has come out against the ad though his disapproval, as some suggest, might simply mean he’s seeking cover, or more cynically, seeking to draw attention to the ad. Still, I’m quite sure that if the eventual Republican nominee has direct associations with some unsavory individual, the Democrats will let me hear about it as they should. What they won’t do, if past history is any guide, is pass on this sort of third-hand association-by-association-by association garbage.

And so North Carolina, at the local office level, will remain a one party state.