Governors’ Papers

The Department of Cultural Resources put on a nice lovefest for the presentation of Governor Hunt’s fourth volume of papers Tuesday. Governor Perdue was in excellent form, and the Southeast Raleigh High School vocal ensemble was outstanding.   (One bit of news was missing from Under the Dome’s account: Governor Hunt said he had talked…

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Jimmy Obama?

Democrats fear they’re watching another failed Presidency. Like with Jimmy Carter, they see a faltering economy and a President who seems unable to turn the political tide.   It was telling that, throughout Carter’s four years in office, editorial cartoons pictured him growing smaller and smaller. In the few cartoons left today, Obama gets skinnier…

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Disputing Pat

A TAPster takes on Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory over McCrory’s op-ed in the Charlotte Observer on voter ID: “I think there are some interesting facts that McCrory failed to share in his piece – and I’m surprised a paper like the Observer would publish without asking him some questions on his sources. Notably McCrory…

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The Bonehead Budget Award

Linda Hayes, the secretary of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, is this month’s winner of the Thom Tillis Bonehead Budget Award.   Speaker Tillis, you recall, put state government on a diet, then gave his staff fat raises.   Hayes wins for complaining about budget cuts and then, according to a TAPster, “closing a couple…

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Smart ALECs

A TAPster takes strong issue with the N&O’s reporting on the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is meeting this weekend in New Orleans. “The N&O’s Under the Dome blog reached a distressing new low in public affairs reporting with its story on the American Legislative Exchange Council. The blog reports on allegations by a liberal…

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TV Alert

For those of you who don’t have a date Saturday night, Carter and I will be on WRAL’s “On the Record” show at 7 pm. If you have something better to do, you can watch the 30-minute program online.   We’re talking about politics, of course: veto overrides, redistricting and the 2012 elections.

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Outlook for Obama

Public Policy Polling is bullish on President Obama’s reelection prospects. I’m not.   Tom Jensen at PPP wrote this week:   “A broad theme has been emerging in our state by state Presidential polling over the last couple months: if the Republicans nominate Mitt Romney it’s a tossup. And if they nominate anyone else it’s…

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Bad Outcome for Democrats

Democrats hoped the debt-ceiling narrative would play out like this: Tea Party extremists nearly drive America over the cliff.   Instead, it went like this: Government is broken and doesn’t work.   That’s a big problem for Democrats. Because voters see them as the government party and Republicans as the anti-government party.   Democrats always…

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Battling Extremism

The headline and teaser on Politico today read: “W.H. counter-radicalization plan due: The administration plans to roll out its new strategy for countering extremism in the U.S. Wednesday.”   Given how the debt-ceiling fight turned out, it’s about time the White House came up with a strategy for combating the Tea Party.

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Holden On

Can Holden Thorp escape being sacked by an all-out Rams Club blitz?   Even worse, he’s catching hell both ways: from people mad he fired Butch Davis and from people mad he didn’t fire Davis earlier.   No good deed goes unpunished.   Here’s the story I hear: Davis’ firing was Thorp’s doing, not new…

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