#ncga: Making deals — with the devil
Well, the GOP has officially surrendered their advantage in the area of taxes. After so many decades 
as the low – / anti-tax party, the GOP majority on Jones Street pushed through increases in the state gasoline tax. Reputed Republican governor Pat McCrory signed the legislation into law, while grinning like a donkey eating briers.
What makes the whole episode even more appalling is THIS:
The flip-flop last week of Cumberland County’s Democratic state House members on the bill to cut North Carolina’s gasoline tax demonstrates the art of the political deal.
On Monday, State Reps. Marvin Lucas of Spring Lake and Rick Glazier and Elmer Floyd of Fayetteville voted against the motor fuels tax bill. On Tuesday, when the bill came up for its final House vote, they voted for it.
They flipped, Glazier said, because they made a deal with Republican state Rep. David Lewis of Harnett County for something they want from him later. Lewis, the House Rules Committee chairman, is one of the top-ranked House lawmakers. […]
Let’s see. The GOP has 75 of the House’s 120 seats — AND they are making deals with Rick Glazier, the House Democrat whip ??????? Why?
Also — what kind of deal did Glazier and his Democrat colleague get from Lewis? I spoke to some of my eyes and ears in the House GOP caucus — you know, those folks Brad Crone says are not supposed to be talking to us — and they are completely unaware of the details. Why is the chairman of the House Rules Committee — the speaker’s right hand — cutting deals with a Democrat leader, without first briefing his own caucus?
We don’t yet know the details of said deal, but — rest assured — it will end up being much better for Glazier than it will be for the rest of us. Glazier is a very smart, highly-partisan liberal. Lewis was the only Republican to support the implementation of ObamaCare in North Carolina.
(We’re sure the negotiations — from Glazier’s perspective — on this deal were something akin to taking candy from a baby.)
Finally fed up with the GOP Establihsment? Do something about it! Retake control of your vote. Don’t let the GOP Establishment sit back and count your vote as ‘in the bag’, just because you are registered as a Republican.
On Tax Day, Wednesday, 15 April 2015, ConservativeGrassrootVoters.org will set up tables at the US Post Office in downtown Southern Pines, NC from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm, to talk with voters and assist in any voter, Republican or Democrat, re-register as an Unaffiliated voter. This is a statewide, effort to move as many Republicans out of the grips of the Republican Establishment in both Raleigh and Washington, the same folks who have betrayed us again and again.
We are not going to sit back and permit it to happen again in 2016, Look us up at the link above, come join us on Tax Day in Downtown Southern Pines. No more sheep. We are sheepdogs from here on in.
Are you sure Karl Rove and the boys are not paying for that effort? This scheme just makes it easier for the establishment to control the GOP, and leave conservatives out in the cold as castrated Unaffiliateds. Having pull within the party structure is valuable in nominating the right candidates, and you don’t have it if you cut and run and so sulk as an Unaffiliated.
If a new party emerges, it is likely to happen like it did in Canada with a split in the Progressive Conservatives and most of the party infrastructure in western Canada deserting en mass to the Reform Party, starting the ball rolling which ended up with the demise of the Progressive Conservatives in national Candian politics. Conservatives need to be part of the GOP structure if it comes to that, not sitting on the outside with their thumbs up their rear ends as impotent Unaffiliateds.
You also need to know that there is a move afoot to close the GOP primary, something conservatives nationally have been pushing for since the establishment used the open primary in Mississippi last year to royally screw conservatives. Polls show that Unaffiliateds overall are more liberal than registered Republicans, so excluding them from our primary makes it easier to nominate conservatives, If the early primaries in 2008 had been closed, exit polls show that McCain would have lost them, and thus never been the GOP nominee,
You can go sulk as an Unaffiliated if you wish, but I plan to stay and fight. It is not in my nature to cut and run.
Exactly. This summer the NCGOP leadership will be asking the attending delegates to make major changes to the Party Program of Organization which will further empower the Establishment. That will happen if conservative delegates bail out of the Party and leave it to the Establishment flunkies to have their way at the convention.
And don’t forget that Ted Cruz’ campaign is probably the last chance to save the country. How can anyone who calls themselves a conservative bail out on that? In a tight convention, it will not only be the official allegiance of delegates but their real allegiance that matters, as procedural votes like credentials challenges could decide the outcome of the convention. Sitting on the sidelines as a self-castrated Unaffiliated will give a conservative no say in who those delegates are.
And, of course, by the time the primary may well be closed, so that self-castrated Unaffiliateds will not even be able to vote in it.
Raph: Do you actually believe for a moment that the so-called GOP Establishment is going to rally round Ted Cruz? If anything, it will be the de facto Grand New Party that does so. Starve the Old Party of registered voters, and you’ll begin, for the first time in recent memory, the Old Party giving in to demands of Constitutional Americans for folks like Ted Cruz or Scott Walker. They’ll hate us (but the do already), but they’ll capitulate, because we will have ‘weaponized’ our Unaffiliated / Independent votes.
Ted Cruz is going to have to beat the establishment, the same way Ronald Reagan beat the establishment, but to do that, we need all of the conservatives in place, not off on an Unaffiliated tangent where they will have little impact on the process. And once conservatives win, some of the establishment will join with conservatives, like some did with Reagan, and others will go sulk, again as occurred with Reagan. Either way, we will have a candidate who can take back America in 2016.
What we don;t need is conservatives to start preemptively sulking now by registering Unaffiliated.
The ‘new’ Party has already emerged. And, it’s not the mythic Tea Party that the Establishment goes to great lengths to besmirch. Both the Republican and Democrat Establishments have disengaged from their bases, and coalesced into a (third) Ruling Party. Boehner and Pelosi plot together to push through legislation that Constitutional Americans, and folks who mistakenly still call themselves Republicans, fought against in the November 2014 elections. Boehner-Pelosi have nullified our resounding American vote of #NoConfidence in the Obama-Jarrett regime. Rather than stop Obama-Jarrett, Boehner-Pelosi are facilitating his continued assault on the Republic. We need to dump the Grand Old Party monicker, shed its cadaver, because the GOP is dead, propped up and lips moved by Boehner-McConnell and their toadies in Raleigh.
Nothing changes, if nothing changes.
Change starts here. Change starts now.
A path forward in politics requires 1) ballot access, and 2) a mechanism to recruit and support candidates. You have totally failed to present even wishful thinking that either is in place with your alternative or could reasonable be made so, especially before the 2016 election. Your proposal is a recipe for disaster for conservatives, as it takes them off the playing field at a critical time.
Those who jump on the Unaffiliated bandwagon clearly have not thought the whole project through.
Beat you to it. Changed my registration from Repub to Unaffiliated about 3 months ago! Best move I’ve made in years. Good luck with the drive on tax day. Hope you get a lot of takers. Maybe the GOP (good ol’ politicians) will get the message.
When the ncga suggested not raising the gas tax but lowering it I knew something was amiss as their other alternative was to add $200 to everyone’s car registration which would have severely hurt the seniors and low income families. So how much are they raising it? It is bad enough that we are having to not only fight the feds on all fronts but now we have to be extremely vigilant of our Raleigh crowd. Because of the 2014 new W-4 forms my taxes increased after saying that they would be more tax payer friendly. Oh well,life is a bowl of cherries if you have expendible income.