Monkey Business Report: NCGOP platform edition
The solar goons are something else. They have this Jason Voorhees-like quality to them. Just when you think they’re finally killed off, they come back for a sequel. This time, it looks like they have lined enough pockets with their dubiously-sourced cash to influence the North Carolina Republican Party platform.
Let’s look at the language from 2015: 
[…] We support energy security, affordable energy and energy independence. A comprehensive energy policy includes offshore and on¬shore oil and natural gas, nuclear power, coal, solar, wind and alternative fuels that do not adversely impact the food supply or energy costs. We support efforts to develop oil and natural gas through safe, clean, hydraulic fracturing. We call for repeal of the national ethanol mandate and EPA and offshore regulation and the state renewable energy mandate.[…]
Oooooo-kay. With me so far? Good. Now, let’s look at the language in the proposed 2016 platform that will be presented at the state party convention:
[…] We support energy security, affordable energy and energy independence. A comprehensive energy policy includes offshore and on-shore oil and natural gas, nuclear power, coal, solar, wind and alternative fuels that do not adversely impact the food supply or energy costs. We support efforts to develop oil and natural gas through safe, clean hydraulic fracturing. We call for repeal of the national ethanol mandate. EPA offshore regulations should be reviewed and revised in order to allow the State of NC to explore offshore drilling. The states renewable energy mandate should be periodically reviewed to ensure that it is the minimum necessary to promote energy independence and the use of alternative fuels.[…]
So, in a year’s time, we’ve gone from repealing the energy mandate to “review[ing]” it “to ensure it is the minimum necessary.” *Boy, spreading around cash sure can get those silly principles things thrown right out the window, can’t it?*
How does THIS change on energy — basically giving a nod to government regulation and subsidies — mesh with the other parts of the platform that praise “free markets” and “free enterprise”?
Principles and consistency don’t matter anymore. Politicos STAND FOR whatever the last guy or gal who put a check in his or her hand f
avors. Hands down.
The renewable energy mandate creates an artificial demand that unnecessarily knocks up our utility bills. It’s making some very wealthy, very connected individuals filthy rich at our expense. And it needs to DIE.
Buying those two progressive Republican consultants Dee Stewart and Paul Shumaker has sure paid dividends for our hard core environmental movement. Now we even have the NCGOP Platform Committee recommending a key part of the Obama green energy agenda for the NCGOP Platform! God bless the Solyndra Republicans. Now all we have to do is snooker the delegates into passing it.
Oh, and you might be surprised at how many GOP legislators principles are for sale for a little progressive cash.
“Oh, and you might be surprised at how many GOP legislators principles are for sale for a little progressive cash.”
After watching Raleigh operate for years… sadly, I’m not surprised – it seems to be the default ideology. It’s only surprising when one of them pops up and actually “has” the principles they claim on the campaign trail.
Of course, lately, those guys get run out of town by the crony-capitalist “leadership”, helped along by a distracted and under-informed populace. *sigh*
Our GOP elected officials seem to divide between Limited Government Republicans on one hand, and Special Interest Republicans on the other. We need to be more active in the primaries to maximize the former and minimize the latter.
Amen to “It needs to die.”
I might have missed it, but it looks like support for traditional marriage, which was in the last Platform, is MIA in this one. I haven’t gone through it completely yet to see what other left turns there may be.
I remember one of our establishment posters commenting sometime ago that the platform was going to be made more liberal, and he appears to be correct. We need to remember that the membership of this platform committee was mostly appointed by the same cabal of District Chairman who hired Woodhouse and want to fire Harnett.
That is how the anti-toll plank was removed. They “introduced a new, re-written platform” at the Cherokee convention and waiting to see if activists would fight to put them back.
People got sidetracked trying to put other planks back in that had also been dropped. And as usual, quorum breaks before debate is completed.
There seem to be a lot of similarities between the poll plank and the renewable mandate plank. Both were originally inserted from the floor by overwhelming vote of the delegates. In both case, it was the committee in its smoke filled room that tried to in one case take the issue out of the platform and in the other reverse the party’s position on it. Why is it that a handful of people on a committee think they should be overturning the overwhelming position of delegates on the floor? That seems a bit on the arrogant side to me.
I recall that at the last convention, the scuttlebutt was that it was the committee chairman, a Mary Jo Sheppard from the Charlotte area who was pushing to make the platform more liberal. This time, the problem is clearly not the chairman but seems to lie elsewhere on the committee.
These things become very annoying to delegates. The language opposing amnesty for illegal aliens was also removed by liberal Republicans on the committee a few years ago and had to be restored by the delegates from the floor by overwhelming vote.
We need to mobilize now to ensure the District Chairmen are replaced next year. And be carefu;l with who you replace them with. I promise you at least one is gone.
I am Chairman of this years Platform Committee. There are no boogeymen here. Traditional marriage is fully addressed in Art I para 2. Regarding the change in wording on the energy mandate, the current wording does not keep the GenAssy from ending the mandates. It can also be changed at the Convention.
It does support the mandates, whereas the current platform calls for their repeal. That is a huge change. Where did this come from? Who proposed it?
This language is totally unacceptable. Yes, it can be changed back on the floor, but the committee should never have changed it.
Doesn’t Chairman Harnett get to name the chairman of these committees? Did he not think to appoint a real conservative as the chairman of the Platform Committee?
As I recall, the state chairman gets three appointments, including the committee chairman, while district chairmen get thirteen appointments to the committee. It is clear who was driving this bus. I understand that Mike Speciale, a conservative legislator is the chairman.
To be clear, the chairman’s appointees were in a very distinct minority, even if one of them held the title of chairman. In a very polarized party, numbers count more that titles and 12 hostile district chairman have 12 appointees on one side with only 4 on the other.
Yes, Rep. Speciale was/is the platform chair, he did the best job possible. My understanding is there was an attempt to hi-jack the committee by one or two folks and that most of the work was done by email or phone with only one sparsely attended face to face meeting by the committee.
The tricks I saw in the Charlotte convention are much like Delegate Z said but more than that. They save to the end and send people out so as not to have a quorum to vote on something they don’t want. They drag out the event so that those things not finished get conveniently pushed to executive session. They have people stand up and complain because they paid for a lunch with an elected official and rush them out the door. All per plan. You would think that the platform and substance of our party, what we stand for would take a higher priority. But then again some candidates have run on platforms like amnesty that the platform opposed. But then they get elected and vote like they have never heard of our platform anyway.
There was a lot of time wasted at that convention on ”break out sessions” which were worthless and essentially an excuse to run out the clock on the important stuff – the business of the convention.
The platform is the party.