Archive for 2012
GOP Silence is Deafening
Suddenly the Republican chorus howling for justice has gone silent. The chorus was in full cry for John Edwards, Mike Easley and Bev Perdue. Now comes Charles Thomas. Like Edwards, Thomas held a position of public trust and power. Like Edwards, Thomas cheated on his wife. Like Edwards, Thomas’s wife had cancer. …
Read MoreThe Choice Is…
With the election roaring down the homestretch, last weekend Republican leaders gathered at their convention in Greensboro (to gird for the final battle with Obama) and who did they choose to give voice to the party’s leaders and say to voters, We have the wisdom and character to lead the country through storm and turmoil…
Read MoreEdwards’s Revenge
Wade Smith wisely advised that John Edwards plant a garden and bide his time before finding a new endeavor. A less philosophical and forgiving soul might have a different suggestion for Edwards’s new life. No, there won’t be any return to politics. But suppose Edwards bides his time until his nemesis George Holding (former…
Read MoreThe Verdict
John Edwards wasn’t found guilty, but the federal government certainly was – of overreach, incompetence or both. Here’s how bad the U.S. Attorneys Office and Justice Department bungled: They indicted the most despised politician in America – a man a jury might want to convict just on general principle. The government throws at him…
Read MoreThoughts
A Tapster submitted this blog about the John Edwards verdict.: The John Edwards verdict hopefully ends a decade-long parade of Democrats doing the perp walk to federal and state courthouses to atone for political and financial misdeeds. Our ears ring from the sound of judges’ gavels banging down on the careers of Mike Easley,…
Read MoreTrumped-Up Hate
There’s no point wondering what Donald Trump was thinking when he dragged the “birther” dead horse back into Mitt Romney’s stable. What’s inside Trump’s head is even more ridiculous than the hair on top. But here’s a question more to the point – from a friend visiting elderly relatives and subjected to days-long exposure…
Read MoreA Romney-McCrory Collapse
A couple of Republican friends confess to their nightmare scenario: a collapse by both Mitt Romney and Pat McCrory. Conservative Republicans have long worried that Romney might fail to stir the base. That turnout was key to the 2010 election and the gay-marriage amendment. Now McCrory’s petty, panicked and petulant mishandling of the…
Read MoreWired Up
Before the legislators trooped back to town the News and Observer ran an ‘expose’ about how public hospitals receive millions of dollars in tax breaks to help them care for the indigent but how those tax breaks put millions more in the hospitals’ pockets than they are spending on the poor. Governor Perdue, when…
Read MoreEviscerating Politics
Political consultants have a way of getting carried away and saying things they quickly regret. Believe me, I’ve been there. So it was with Dustin Ingalls, assistant director of Public Policy Polling, who told a Cumberland County Democratic group: “We have to absolutely eviscerate McCrory….It’s going to have to be a very negative…
Read MoreA Low Blow
This time Mitt Romney has gone too far. He has sunk to the lowest, basest political attack ever seen in our country. His latest negative assault on President Obama goes beyond anything the birthers, the haters and the Jeremiah Wright-baiters ever thought of. Romney attacked the President for playing golf. Romney’s campaign…
Read More