Posts by Gary Pearce
The New Economy
Go back 50 years in North Carolina. To 1960. The year Terry Sanford was elected governor. Tobacco was king in North Carolina – politically and economically. WRAL-TV started its broadcast days (after a devotional) with the Farm Report. The News & Observer had a regular farm reporter. And the health of the…
Read MoreSuperdelegates Under Attack
A national Democratic Party reform that Jim Hunt pioneered nearly thirty years ago is under attack. And state Senator Dan Blue is defending the reform. There is some irony here. When Hunt was Governor and Blue was House Speaker in 1993-94, the two didn’t always get along. They clashed especially on Hunt’s crime…
Read MoreThe Decade of Obama?
The Teens may come to be Barack Obama’s decade the way the Eighties were Ronald Reagan’s decade. Ideology aside, the two Presidents have much in common. Both were outsiders who ran campaigns that upset conventional wisdom. Both had lives before politics – Reagan as an actor and union leader, Obama as a…
Read MorePolitical Terror
Republicans – including Senator Richard Burr – couldn’t wait to blame the Obama administration for the Christmas Day terrorist scare. In other words, to indulge in the kind of politics they called unpatriotic when Bush and Cheney were in charge. Let’s look at some facts. A. Burr agrees with the President that…
Read MoreBev and New Year’s Resolutions
At breakfast the other day, a friend pointed to his mocha and cinnamon-crunch bagel. “I’m doing this today because starting January 1 I’m losing 20 pounds,” he vowed. I congratulated him. And wished him luck. That’s a hard resolution to keep; most resolvers fail. But Governor Perdue has done it. She recently…
Read MoreOne Year
A year is a long time in politics. One year ago: Barack Obama was a colossus, a superstar who had transformed politics Bev Perdue was about to enjoy a (short) honeymoon The clouds over Mike Easley were just gathering Tony Rand was ready for another turn as second-in-command of the Senate Wake County Democrats were…
Read MoreControlling the Narrative
The cable-TV blabbermouths are all over the Obama administration over the Christmas Day terrorist scare. The know-it-alls proclaim that this is a PR disaster for the White House. The message machine was asleep. Obama was slow on the uptake. Janet Napolitano blew it. Napolitano did blow it. But I’m not so sure Obama…
Read MoreMerry Christmas
I’m going to take a few days off from blogging to enjoy Christmas with my family at Nags Head. Along with our two dogs, my 90-year-old mother-in-law, visits with my mother and my new stepfather and my 106-year-old grandmother (that’s no misprint; she’s 106), various in-laws, much food and cheer and – if my brother-in-law…
Read More31 Million Reasons
President Obama and the Democrats are doing a better job ramming health-care reform through the Senate than explaining it. They should try this message: 31 million. That’s the number of uninsured Americans who will get health insurance over the next decade because of the bill. That’s not Democratic rhetoric. That’s from the nonpartisan…
Read MoreCapital Potty-Break Putsch?
Are Washington Republicans learning from Wake County Republicans? Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a leading opponent of the health-care reform bill, said Sunday: “What the American people should pray is that somebody can’t make the vote.” Democrats protested that Coburn was wishing misfortune on a Senator. Maybe Coburn was just hoping that…
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