#ncgop: Raleigh’s heavy hand

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The NCGOPe is skeered.  The “little people” out there are making trouble again.  Raleigh knows it.  Dallas Woodhouse, I am told by several sources, is proudly announcing to anyone who will listen that he “will not work for Jim Womack.”  (I haven’t confirmed this with Jim, but I am doubting that Dallas will even have that option under Chairman Jim Womack.)

Instead of responding to concerns from outside the beltline, the heavy-handed tactics are coming out.

In the Twelfth Congressional District, Republicans are trying to hold leadership elections.  The state party — NCGOPe HQ, in other words — performed a hostile takeover of the district organization.  They’ve even allowed pols from the NINTH Congressional district to assist in picking leaders for the 12th.   Can’t beat ’em?  Outvote ’em with imported voters. 

The 12th has historically been a bastion of conservative”troublemakers” — a pain in the Raleigh GOPe’s neck.  Raleigh has seen no problem with negotiating with Roy Cooper or General Assembly Democrats. Diplomacy. Making nice.  Kissy-face.

But conservative  Republican activists?  SHOVE IT DOWN THEIR THROATS.  MAKE THEM EAT EVERY LAST SYLLABLE.   The heavy hand of the party bureaucracy is running off conservatives in the 12th in a manner akin to what the US cavalry did to the Indians.  

The party chairman’s race is even nastier.  Robin Hayes — nicknamed “the ol’ porch dog” by his former congressional and General Assembly colleagues for his incredible impersonation of an old dog on the front porch –  is running for reelection by claiming credit for Donald Trump (but NOT Pat McCrory, Bob Edmunds, Buck Newton, or those lost NC House seats).   Hayes got where he is by aiding and abetting a vicious slander attack on Hasan Harnett — the then-duly elected (and first black) NCGOP chairman who had been aligned with Tea Partiers.  (And then there was this bit of heavy-handed nastiness during his previous tenure as chairman during the 2012 Tampa convention.) 

Challenger Jim Womack has been hitting the stump claiming that things would have been worse in 2016 for the NCGOP if not for the Trump Wave and the RNC camping out in Raleigh all year.  He points out that the party, under its current leadership, is on track to be in THIRD PLACE in terms of voter registration by October of this year. He says the only game plan in Raleigh right now is their own personal job security — not the promotion of the conservative ideals in the platform or growing the party. 

If you watched the chairman’s debate from last week, you would have noticed something BIG:  Womack talked ideas and strategy while the allegedly successful incumbent, Hayes,  lowered his belly into the mud and stopped just short of screaming ‘Yo Mama.’

Hayes allies have stooped as low as trying to paint Womack’s wife, a Lee County School Board member, as some kind of criminal.  Their “case” is based on a years-ago intra-family dispute, involving teenagers, that led to someone calling the police.  Both Womack and his wife were distinguished military veterans who would have lost their jobs, or been severely penalized, if this had led to a conviction or had even been slightly serious.  Nobody got penalized.  Nobody lost anything.  Anybody want to bet that there hasn’t been even ONE embarrassing Hayes family argument in the last two or three decades? (Wanna bet?) 

The NCGOPe is once again scared to death of losing their death-grip on the spoils of political power in our seat of government.  They did a bang-up job of slandering one reformer who ended up going away quietly.  With Jim Womack, they KNOW it’s going to get loud.