Bannon IS right. Politics IS war. (Stop bringing knives to a gunfight.)
Steve Bannon has a point.
In 2012, Democrats in North Carolina didn’t sit around and study their belly buttons philosophically. They cranked up their BluePrintNC smear machine and went after the new GOP regime in Raleigh mercilessly. You had their driveby media hacks pounding from one side. You had the Moral Monday marches pounding from another. The left doesn’t sleep. They don’t quit. They don’t play nice. They keep scratching and clawing until all of their enemies are vanquished and they have what they want. Many of them wage this war on our culture and all we hold dear while being subsidized by US.
George W. Bush kept a lot of Clinton appointees in place when he took office in 2001. Look what good that did him. The Democrats packed the state bureaucracy before Bev hit the road in 2012. Team McCrory did little to fumigate the place. And it hurt him. A lot of damage was done from within.
Despite the never-ending Greek chorus chanting “Bigot, racist, homophobe, misogynist”, there is still a fantastic opportunity to reverse the damage these people have done to our culture, our economy, and our public education system. 
June Atkinson, the actual Oldest Living Confederate Widow — a facelift with two legs — has dominated our public school system for decades. She ended up losing this go-around to someone half her age. And just feel the graciousness oozing out of her pores:
[…] “It’s really hard for me to figure out what I want to say to him, because I don’t know where to start. I mean, he has taught two years. He’s never run an organization that has almost 900 people. He has never traveled to the 100 counties. He doesn’t have a background,” she said. “So, it’s like, how do I teach or how do I help a person who is an infant in public education to become an adult overnight to be able to help public education in this state?”
First of all, it’s outrageous that she HAS 900 people to “manage.” Second of all, it’s a stretch to suggest that North Carolina public schools have been managed well EVER. Mama June and a lot of the edu-crats have been living like those Japanese soldiers who held out on those islands and didn’t want to believe the war was over. They’re going to keep doing the same thing over and over again — even if it’s clear THAT ain’t working.
Mark Johnson has been serving on a school board for a large school system here in the state. He’s also taught in the classroom. (If I recall correctly, I think he’s a parent.) So, it seems — including his own tenure as a student in North Carolina schools — he’s viewed the problem from all of the angles.
I met him during the primary campaign and wasn’t all that impressed. He was preaching something that sounded way too close to Common Core to me. Folks I trust tell me that during the general election campaign he did a good job of backing away from Common Core. So, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Gosh know, we need to try something different. Johnson IS stepping into a godawful mess that took decades to build up. Hopefully, he will learn from Bush and McCrory and substantially clean house. Surround himself with like-minded folks who put actually educating the kids way ahead of political indoctrination and labor union nourishment.
Bannon is right about personnel in an administration. Personnel IS policy. We need to clean house of the liberals in policy making positions. It is good that Trump understands that. Too bad that McCrory did not, which is one of the reasons that he is where he is at. McCrory appointed non-Republicans as HALF of his cabinet, and then gave them free rein to hire their own policy staff with no oversight from the governor’s office. The Republicans on the cabinet were themselves largely not policy oriented people with a background as activists, so they were almost as bad as the non-Republicans. It seemed easier for Democrat or liberal politicals to get key positions in the McCrory administration than GOP or conservative politicals.
Governor Jim Martin did it right. He had a staff of 14 within the governor’s office riding herd on all major appointments and even most minor ones in state government during his administration. We need that type of oversight again.
The bad policies from some of these liberal appointees came back to bite McCrory in the ass on election day, as it cost him votes among the GOP base.
Take John Skvarla, who ran an environmental company before the election and has never been a Republican, but ended up Secretary of DENR. Skvarla was the scoundrel who promoted the environmentalists of the CCA with the governor’s office. The CCA are mortal enemies of our commercial fishermen and want to put them out of business. The commercial fishermen have been a strong GOP constituency for decades. Thanks to Skvarla, the governor has been appointing CCA operatives to the Marine Fisheries Commission, and that threatens the jobs and livelihoods of the commercial fishermen. This has cost McCrory votes of normally Republican voters in the east.
Or take Tony Tata, the failed public school adminstrator and non-Repubican that McCrory appointed as Secretary of Transportation. There were many policy blunders at DOT under Tata, who brought over a bunch of non-Republican career public school bureaucrats for high positions at DOT. The one that seriously cost McCrory votes on election day was Tata pushing toll roads, particularly the controversial HOT lanes on I-77.
Then there is the Sons of Confederate Veterans license plate fiasco that cost McCrory conservative votes. A conservative Secretary of Cultural Resources could have made the contacts to save McCrory’s bacon there, but McCrory had appointed a liberal Democrat who had staffed the agency with other liberals, who had no traction with SCV members to help the governor.
If McCrory survives, and in spite of these blunders in appointments, I hope he does, then hopefully he will have learned his lesson on appointments. I also hope that Dan Forest has been watching closely as this train wreck on appointments has blown up in the governor’s face.
McCrory’s disregard of our state’s clean water through several policies and rollover to Duke Energy as well as his defense of the economic and human rights disaster that is Hate Bill 2 are the real reasons he is in the pickle he is.
The far left that got its panties in a twist over the Bathroom Privacy bill were not going to vote Republican anyway. The numbers have been in Brant’s articles and in other posts that show that McCrory appointees going against the base DID cost him enough votes to cost him the election.
I know nothing about Mark Johnson, but I do know if he doesn’t clean house of all the liberal bureaucrats in the Education Department, he is doomed. He needs to be a strong advocate for vouchers, reform, and common sense–not common core. He will be a lame duck his first day in office if he does not take firm control and immediately bring in his own team. If he doesn’t, he will suffer an even worse fate than Pat McCrory. Even though the voters in NC have given Republicans some great victories, there is substantial evidence that Republican office holders have never figured out how to govern with conservative backbone. At some point the voters are just going to give up on us. After McCrory, I couldn’t blame them.
GREAT ADVICE! A reluctance to “clean house” has doomed many a Repub office-holder. His/her department rots from the inside out and they never see it coming. …. if Mark Johnson doesn’t do it he will indeed be sabotaged and gone in four yeats.
WHOA Dude! You just stuffed June Atkinson feet-first into a verbal wood chipper !!! As a fellow blogging smart-ass of ill repute, I can say THAT was “prime cut”. You disemboweled her with a rusty oyster knife …. more please.
AgentPierce
On the clean house part of your argument I wholeheartedly agree. However, there is a vein of thinking amongst some Republicans (Include R leaning allies) that needs to be addressed. Let’s start with another agreement. I agree dont bring knives to gun fights. Now the warning: Do not start a fight with an enemy if they come fully loaded and in great numbers when you have no intention, or ability of doing the same. In such settings Sun Tzu’s comments should be heard. Prepare ahead of time. Strategy and Tactics both engaged. When equal in numbers fight, and when outnumbered and outgunned harrass. Do not committ your troops to battles you won’t or can’t back them in. Next time prepare for all out war and then fight it, and not just in friendly precincts. If you can’t let it go. There is always another fight and you need the manpower.
This article is not about picking legislative battles. It is about staffing administrations. The president, governor, and council of state members all have positions to fill that they have absolute discretion over. They are the policy making jobs. It is foolish and counterproductive to leave holdovers in those postions from an administration of the other party, or appoint anyone but your own stalwarts to them. It does not require a fight, as a new elected official has the absolute right under the law to fill those positions with their own people.