North Carolina – Republicans
Upside Down
Who said foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds? Republicans in North Carolina certainly appear untethered by consistency when it comes to the relationship between government and the private sector. Nationally, Republicans are in a frenzy about the Obama administration’s policy toward business. Socialism, they thunder. The very idea of the federal government…
Read MoreReading the Sunday Paper
Tom Fetzer is a smart guy. Iâm thinking of endorsing him for state Republican Chair. Thatâs because he would be good, and I donât want a good GOP chair. I figure my endorsement would be the kiss of death. Tom has a gimmick in his campaign: help put The News & Observer out of business.…
Read MoreA.I.G., Alcoa and Taxes
Well, Obama’s after A.I.G. hammer and tongs. Which is fine. More than fine. But there’re also a couple of overlooked questions worth considering: Like why didn’t the Washington genius (and it’s beginning to look like it was Treasury Secretary Geithner) who poured $170 billion into A.I.G. have the good sense to tell A.I.G. up front,…
Read MoreBev’s Budget
I give Governor Perdue and her staff an A+ on message management. They pulled off a neat three-step strategy: Spend weeks warning people how awful the budget cuts are going to be. Then devote her State of the State speech – and the next week’s media events – to saying education would get more money.…
Read MoreA Happy Ending
Gary’s plenty kind to say back in 1984 the folks in Jesse’s campaign ‘were smarter’ than the folks in Hunt’s campaign but I suspect the better term is more experienced – by 1984 we’d been using direct mail to raise money for eight years and airing ‘negative ads’ for four years; Governor Hunt hadn’t but…
Read MoreWhat Was Your First Clue, Sherlock?
Pat McCrory said recently that he learned a lesson from his loss to Bev Perdue: negative ads work. What planet has he been on? My guess is that old warrior Jack Hawke told McCrory long before Election Day that, to win, he would have to attack Perdue. And McCrory was surprised? I suspect this is…
Read MoreBirth Control Pills – A Lot of Times You’re Your Own Worst Enemy
Three weeks before the election, driving to work, an ad came on the radio and I heard a woman’s voice say, Did you know Jesse Helms opposes abortion – even if a woman is raped – even in cases of incest? I thought, Oh, my God – because Hunt had just given about every woman…
Read MoreBurying Her Lead
Governor Perdue had the makings of a great speech last night. But she didn’t give it. When she finished, it felt like the old song: Is that all there is? I had predicted she would paint a broad picture rather than fill in details. But she certainly took that approach to the extreme. The platitude…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Ivory Towers
I think I’ve only spoken to Jim Hunt once in my life – after the fourth debate. Jesse got better in each debate but a slip in the third debate set off a small powder keg: The head of the Veterans for Foreign Wars (VFW) had endorsed Hunt and it rankled Jesse. It got under…
Read MorePolitical Stories: Serenading Jim Hunt
The night after the debate Jesse figured there was no one to blame but himself but, by the next morning, he’d figured out that was wrong. He’d lost, he told me, because of the format (which, he added pointedly, was my and Tom Ellis’s doing). Then, having straightened out who was to blame he rolled…
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