#ncga: The battle for a Jones Street majority
The US Senate race has been sucking up so much oxygen during this campaign season. I thought it might be time to check in with some folks who are intimately familiar with the battle for the majority in the General Assembly.
I spoke with two good sources of mine — one elected and one NOT — who are arguably in the inner circle of the Republican legislators’ political operation.
My sources tell me the best case scenario Republicans can hope for is holding the line / breaking even or the slight possibility of gaining ONE seat in each chamber. Right now, the worst case scenario in the House looks like a loss of five to six seats. Right now, the worst case scenario for the Senate looks like a loss of TWO seats.
Both sources tell me the political climate across the state is worrisome. “I’ve never seen so many people either seriously angry or completely apathetic in my life,” said my elected source. “Getting out the vote is going to be a special challenge this year. There isn’t much out there to fire up the voters to turn out in force.”
I asked my sources about the lack of advertising defending the Republican majority’s record during the past session. So much of the advertising in the US Senate race has been focusing on the General Assembly.
“We’ve got a number of really tight races out there,” said my unelected source. “We’ve got money but it’s going out the door quickly to help out in some of these challenging areas. Normally, you’d expect the state party apparatus to step up and do that PR work. To say the folks in Raleigh are disappointed in the folks at NCGOP HQ would be a serious understatement. ”
Having the Republican-controlled US Supreme Court backdoor gay marriage into North Carolina has deflated what little GOP enthusiasm there might have been. The national Republican Party and its Supreme Court lackeys despise its base and are doing everything in their power to destroy the party. If no Republican voted in November, I couldn’t blame them.
You ungrateful wingnuts! How dare you malign the “NC Boob-ocracy” (RINOs and Rove).
To read these comments, one would think we’re being sold down the river by common riffraff.
Nay, mates! We’re being sold down the river by TOP. MEN.
Now, let’s see some commentary, here, expressing a measure of awed reverence for our tumefied glitterati, as is our duty. //
The issuing of marriage licenses in NC isn’t going to suppress turnout..on the contrary it will be up among social conservatives.
Both Houses will be safely in GOP hands next January. Hopefully, turnout will help us elect Tillis.
I think most of us who consider ourselves to be social conservatives know full well that the GOP and GOP confirmed judges didn’t bring us gay marriage. 4 of the 5 GOP confirmed justices are great on social issues. Only Kennedy is the problem. Anyway, I guess it is more fun to just blame everything on the GOP establishment.
Debate Watcher: Every attorney in the country knows full well that GOP Justice Kennedy is the problem. He is the sole reason the lower courts are tearing up state constitutions. He is even being referred to as the “First Gay Justice” in social media. Even Justice Scalia has said that Kennedy has destroyed all morality in America. Yes, indeed, this is what the GOP Establishment has done to its base. And, don’t forget, is was also an overwhelmingly GOP Supreme Court that unleashed the abortion holocaust on America—50 million dead babies ago! The DC GOP Establishment are not our friends.
The problem is having 4 liberal, Democratic-appointed/confirmed Justices who benefit from the assistance of ONE GOP appointed/confirmed Justice.
80% of the GOP confirmed justices are wonderful on social issues. 100% of the Democratic confirmed justices are worthless.
Any thinking person knows it isn’t the GOP giving us an anti-God judicial system.
Thom Tillis can get out the conservative vote if he stands up to the liberal judge who negated North Carolina voters when they voted for the Marriage Amendment. Thom Tillis can stand tall and fight the power of the ballot box. If he rolls over then he is accepting defeat for North Carolina and he will be reelecting Kay Hagan.
The GOP has a huge messaging problem that starts in DC and works its way down. We have too many wussies who do not want to stand for anything. He have so many great issues that we are not using. Take the illegal immigration issue that Ann Coulter rightly points out could give us a huge wave this year. Scott Brown used it to pull himself into competition in the polls in New Hampshire, to the dismay of some in the establishment in DC. NC is a more conservative state, and it could work wonders against Hagan here.
Or take Obama’s war on affordable energy in his EPA coal regs. That same issue, running againt it, gave the right a huge landslide earlier this year in Australia, and in Canada, encorsing it a few years ago netted their Liberal Party its lowest election result in party history. This has huge potential, as many struggling voters cannot afford the electric rates increases that the left’s kowtowing to the global warmists will cause. Yet Republicans are largely leaving this issoe on the shelf.
Those issues can come into play for the General Assembly, such as a push for repealing the Renewable Energy Mandate (something Tillis blocked, the blockhead) or pushing the measures that the Supreme Court has approved in other states to deal with illegal immigration.
Nominating Tillis not only makes it likely we will lose the Senate seat that we should have won with a decent candidate running a competent campaign, but the massive Democrat TV attack on the General Assembly to get to Tillis will make some of our foks there collateral damage. This was so avoidable. It was nonsensical and counterproductice for so many reasons to nominate Tillis this year for the US Senate, and walking into the crosshairs of Blueprint was one of the big ones.
Issues motivate voters, and Tillis is not doing anything to get our voters out. But by tying him to the Blueprint smears, Tilliis will motivate the Democrat base.
Everyone knows that Tricky Dick Burr voted for and the Republican establishment supports gays openly serving in the military. Tillis attended a fundraiser in Colorado by one of the biggest same sex marriage advocates in the country to get campaign contributions from the pro same sex marriage lobby. Tillis has a leader with planned parenthood on his campaign team.
The Republican establishment is all head over heals in excitement about how much more money this will mean to keep the lights on down at the NCGOP headquarters and more money coming into the GOP coffers nationally if they’ll just quietly let it happen. No opposition from the GOP on this issue, they love constitution trashing legislators (Tillis) and judges (Hobgood) Theres really no big bucks in following the constitution but supporting those who trash it, big bucks.
And yes Earl you are correct
[Every attorney in the country knows full well that GOP Justice Kennedy is the problem. He is the sole reason the lower courts are tearing up state constitutions. He is even being referred to as the “First Gay Justice” in social media. Even Justice Scalia has said that Kennedy has destroyed all morality in America.]
Not a word about ObamaCare, the number of NC citizens who have lost coverage, the premium increases, doctors leaving medicine, the shift to a part-time economy…nothing
Hagan wrote part of the law and TIllis / Rove do nothing to educate voters. The ads write themselves, there is so much video of Hagan i her own words they can use but nothing. Instead the GOP, NCGOP and Tillis attack their base
The top of the ballot does a lot to drive turnout, and therefore impacts the whole ticket. Tillis’ floundering campaign thus hurts everybody on the ticket because it does not drive turnout of the base. Yes, there are activists who will show up and either leave the Senate blank or write in a candidate, and then proceed to vote for the rest of the GOP ticket, but most GOP voters if they are turned off by the top of the ticket just don’t show up to vote for anyone. That is why many of us who do not particularly like Tillis, at least wish he would do something to get the base out. That helps Tillis but it helps a lot of good folks, too.
Obamacare is a huge issue that could motivate the base to turn out, and also grab some ticket splitter vote, if it were used properly. Polls show public opposition to Obamacare continues to grow and there is now a new wave of medical insurance cancellations. Unfortunately, like the 2012 Presidential race, we have nominated a candidate whose own record makes it very problematic to use what is one of our best issues. Hagan moved preemptively months ago to sidestep this issue with ads playing a clip of Tillis calling Obamacare ”a great idea” and pointing out that Tillis had pushed a bill through the NC House to create a state Obamacare exchange in NC. WIth a record like that, it is hard for Tillis to credibly use Obamacare and he has not really tried. The sad thing is that all of this has been known since the beginning, and given Tillis’ very poor positions on issues to take advantage of Hagan’s weaknesses, why in the world did the NRSC and Karl Rove’s mafia go to such links to impose him upon us a a nominee? The NCGOP has been sold a bill of goods on this one, and it will hurt the whole ticket, unfortunately. Why did the NCGOP allow the NRSC and Rove to do this to us?
Debate Watcher: The Roe v. Wade decision unleashing the killing of 50 million babies was decided by a US Supreme Court with 7 of the 9 justices being Republicans!! So an overwhelmingly Republican Supreme Court forced abortion on the country. And don’t forget Republican Chief Justice Robert’s key vote legalizing Obamacare. And the only reason we have the liberal Kagan and Sotomayer on the Supreme Court is because two liberal Republican justices resigned as soon as Obama got elected so two liberals could replace them. Basically, this country’s entire liberal agenda has been implemented by Republican Supreme Court justices. This is just the way the Republican Establishment has wanted it. The Bush family is all for same-sex marriage and highly-placed sources in the DC Republican Establishment have been working for years to get same-sex marriage passed. They succeeded and any conservative who can’t see this is blind. The Bush crowd will now try to get our pro-marriage plank removed from the GOP Platform. Just wait and see.
Well aware that it was GOP appointed SCOTUS justices that gave us Roe vs. Wade. Also well aware that it was Reagan who gave us OConnor and Kennedy. But W. came through like a CHAMP on social issues every where he could…including SCOTUS appointments.
I think most people today recognize that the modern GOP is much more conservative that the Eisenhower/Nixon/Reagan republicans. Also, that the Democratic party is much more liberal than the Kennedy/Johnson/Carter Dems of decades ago.
It is really important that people see the forest for the trees…..dislike the modern GOP for many reasons…but being soft on Life and Marriage are not problems of the GOP party today.
In my opinion.
None of these circumstances are going to change until the base gets serious about throwing out the Establishment Chair and Vice-Chair of the NCGOP at the NCGOP convention next year and making sure they’re not replaced by two clones.
Debate Watcher—But for George W. Bush’s appointments to the Fourth Circuit (aided by Lindsay “bomb everything” Graham), we would not have same-sex marriage today in NC. Bush I and Bush II appointees in other circuits around the country have also also ruled in favor of gay marriage. George H.W. Bush even signed as a witness to a gay wedding last year. We were being told the GOP was appointing conservative, moral, strict constructionist judges. It was a lie in far too many instances. I guarantee you the GOP elite will move heaven and earth to remove the marriage platform from the GOP Platform.