Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Polls are a lot like seesaws: They tilt up then gravity takes hold and the poor fellow who was rising finds himself dropping like a stone. Right now gravityâs pulling the Democrats down and the liberals over at Public Policy Polling are so concerned by this seismic shift theyâve turned their automatic polling machines…
For a long time the North Carolina Republican Party has needed its own ‘voice’ and at last it’s found one. Whether you opposed or supported Tom Fetzer during his campaign for State Chairman you have to give him credit: He’s not bashful about debating Governor Perdue and he has a gift for it. …
There’s an apocryphal story about the penultimate political Insider, Tony Rand, debating Jim Gardner during the Lt. Governor’s race in 1988;–in the middle of the debate Gardner was giving Rand (and the other Democratic insiders in Raleigh) the blazes for negotiating secret budget deals behind closed doors, saying, The whole state budget was written in…
Back when Casey Stengel was managing the woeful New York Mets in their first year, he looked down the bench one day and moaned: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” You might ask the same question in Washington today. About both the Democrats and the Republicans. Both parties are still hung up on…
Governor Perdue’s is having the political equivalent of a meltdown;—yesterday a liberal pollster wrote that she is now more unpopular than any Governor he’s polled in the country. Her job approval is lower than Congress’s; in six months her popularity’s fallen further than President Bush’s did in seven years. The meltdown is so complete she’s…
When Pat Stith left the N&O, John Drescher promised that the paper’s investigative role would not lesson. He kept that promise. Now, with Ryan Teague Beckwith gone, can the N&O maintain the momentum he gave Under the Dome? So far, the answer is no. Dome lacks the speed and bite Beckwith had. …
Sarah Palin and her amen chorus are an endless source of free entertainment. In the increasingly incomprehensible interviews she has given since her incomprehensible announcement that she would resign as Alaska’s governor, she has loudly complained – and her acolytes on the right and on Fox News have loudly echoed – about how badly…
Cullen Browder at WRAL asked me to rate Governor Perdue’s first six months in office. I think she’s doing pretty well. Give her a B. An A if she would take a stronger role in resolving the budget. She took over the ship of state in a hurricane: a bad economy and the…
Senator Doug Berger probably never dreamed anyone would run TV ads in his district telling his constituents how he voted to cut 20,000 elderly Medicaid patientsâ home care then, eight days later, turned around and voted to build a $25 million fishing pier at the beach — with a sixteen thousand square foot clubhouse and…
The political sniping began even as chaos still reigned at the White House Correspondents Dinner. My…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…