NCGOP staffer: We need to be more ‘open’ to progressives
Yep. Another one of those twenty-somethings who knows EVERYTHING. Here it is on Twitter:
Catherine Whiteford represents North Carolina on the Young Republicans National 
Committee. (I didn’t know there was such a thing.) We learned earlier that she ran for North Carolina House while also being on the NCGOP payroll and being reimbursed by the NCGOP for “expenses.”
(Whiteford scored a whopping 32% of the vote against the insufferable Grier Martin.)
Whiteford thinks the GOP needs to look at people for who they ARE, and not their gender or sexuality. Yet she brags about campaigning at an event that is first and foremost about certain sexual practices.
It’s also interesting to see that John Hood is right there cheering her on. 
She’s right about the NCGOP needing drastic change. For starters, she and Dallas and a whole bunch of other parasites need to get off the payroll.
Charlotte has NOTHING to teach the rest of the state. From crime to poor schools to over-regulation to high-taxes to crazy traffic, Charlotte is the epitome of a HOT MESS. Its GOP organization is flat-lining locally, and yet they have an inordinate amount of influence in state Republican politics.
The secret to understanding Republicans’ path forward in urban America lies within the local midterm election data.
Look at how my City Council district, District 6, voted on issues. While many Republican candidates lost, the constitutional amendment to cap the income tax passed with 54 percent of the vote. When did Republicans lose the high ground with voters who wanted lower taxes?
It’s easy when you have NO MESSAGE and a lousy communication operation. MORE:
[…] Nearly two-thirds of District 6 voters supported the $50 million affordable housing bond. How many Republican candidates have you ever heard campaigning on affordable housing?
Why don’t Republicans do a better job of explaining to voters that bonds are simply the government seeking permission FROM YOU to RAISE YOUR TAXES to pay off debt? MORE:
[…] Let’s strip everything else away except for our baseline conservative principles. Principles like smaller government, lower taxes, tax what you want less of and subsidize where you want more.[…]
Um, “tax[ing] what you want less of” and “subsidiz[ing] where you want more” are not part of “baseline conservative principles.” I think Mr. Bokhari has been hanging around the Uptown Charlotte crowd a wee bit too much.
MORE:
[…]Then, let’s actually start engaging with independents and progressives. Let’s talk on NPR and Power 98. Let’s go to the Black Political Caucus and Latin American Chamber events. And once we’ve actually heard what they care about, let’s show them through our actions how party balance is a good thing, and conservative principles can in many ways offer more effective and sustainable solutions.[…]
Okay. Selling actual conservatism to folks who have been kept in the dark about it is an idea I can buy into.
MORE:
[…] What comes next some may not want to hear.
We may need to start campaigning on solving the affordable housing crisis and upward mobility challenges, and actually mean it through our actions. […]
THAT, my friends, is socialism. Surrendering to the Bernie Sanders crowd. MORE:
[…] We might need to stop arguing about if climate change is real and instead come to the table to find ways to conserve the environment through pragmatic innovation. […]
Like subsidizing more solar panels and windmills with tax dollars? Your fellow Republicans on Jones Street are way ahead of you on this one. (Sadly.)
MORE:
[…] We might need to stop bristling when we hear terms like white privilege, #metoo and police brutality, and instead seek to better understand different perspectives and grow through conversations. […]
Wow. An antifa / #BlackLivesMatter “Republican.” (I’ve NOW seen it all.)
MORE:
[…] And brace yourself, because we might actually need to engage with members of the
LGBTQ community and show them that there is a dichotomy between our principles of smaller government and individual freedoms and the messages we have been sending. Messages like government should be in the business of telling people who can get married. […]
Most conservatives have ZERO problem with folks who keep their private intimate bedroom activities PRIVATE. Suggesting that Adam & Steve’s ‘special’ relationship is co-equal to your mom and dad’s holy matrimony is a bridge too far for a lot of reasonable people. Gay activists often tell us they want to be left alone and not harassed — nothing more, nothing less. Why put so much effort into tearing down cherished institutions outside that particular community?
(A lot of folks on the limited government side of the fence can live with killing off government-mandated marriage licenses and special tax breaks, and other government deals, for married people.)
MORE:
[…] One thing I’m still unsure of in this blueprint is President Trump. There are things he is doing that I love, and there are things that I hate. Locally we are faced with the
conundrum that if we say anything negative about the president, we will immediately lose half the room. If we say anything positive, or remain silent and not condemn his mere existence, we lose the other half. I have no idea how to resolve this, but if we all keep searching for an answer, remain sensitive to both perspectives, shun those using him in bad faith, and focus on local issues, we may find a path forward.[…]
Aaaah. Waffling. Talking out of both sides of your mouth. *Talk about a profile in courage.*
MORE:
[…] Our conservative principles can still resonate with many in America’s urban cities, but the data are telling us we aren’t applying and messaging them effectively. So I’ve decided this is the blueprint I am going to continue to follow in the final year of my first term on Charlotte City Council, but more vocally and confident in doing what is in my heart. I am sure some will start immediately calling me a RINO and liberal. Still, we cannot do this because we feel we need to do it to survive. We must do it because we believe it is the right thing to do.
Translation: This guy is scared of losing his seat in the next election. And I don’t blame him. The life of a Republican in Charlotte is a lot like a kitten trying to live in a pen full of pit 
bulls.
What’s more important — people with Rs next to their name filling seats on councils and in legislative chambers, or a message of hope that inspires people and sends our state and country into a positive direction?
Going hat-in-hand, head bowed to the progressives is a BIG FAT LOSER. It’s disgusting that we have a NCGOP staffer — and the state’s alleged conservative intellectual leader — buying into this.
No what we need is people with bad values to go join the democrats the party of bad values. Progressive godless values have no place in the Republican party otherwise there is not reason to still have the party if it fights for evil
clearly a good reason to not send the NCGOP money is so your money does not help pay people with bad values
People should have to agree to fight to the conservative values in the party platform before anyone gets hired and LBGT123xyz values are not conservative they are destructive to America
#StopTheLBGT #OneManOneWoman #BiblicalMoralityMatters
They should read and study the National GOP Platform written for the 2016 Convention by some genuine conservatives and patriots. It is true Republicanism but, no one, no one, in the Republican Party at any level ever speaks of it!
I have attended many GOP Executive Committee meetings and the Republican Party Platform has never been mentioned! Not once!
You are so right!
So true. And now here in Fayetteville, our GOP has fallen behind unaffiliateds in numbers of registered voters. So sad to see this happen, but understandable with the numbers of Democrats we have and little interest to switch parties in the face of the social and workplace alienation one faces when identifying as Republican. Today’s voters don’t have the strength of character to make proper choices, and we work uphill constantly against a PROGRESSIVE media. The solution is not to obsequiously cater to THEM, but to change them.
I think lots are switching to unaffiliated because they love what Trump is doing, and see the GOP standing in his way.
To name a few Thom Toll Road Tillis, and the progressive swamp dweller Burr.
I sometimes question how long I can stay a Republican………they say they are small government, but once in power most see more government as our only salvation…..
I know many conservatives who have dumped the GOP, and that trend will only continue if they move further in a progressive direction, in which case I will also be leaving, probably for the Constitution Party. The NCGOP has no clue what their base wants when that information is readily available to them in the party platform. Idiots.
Just this past year the Wake County YRs wanted to work towards changing sex education policy in schools. Think about it…in an election year! People like that are all over the place in the RDU region. I’m tired of people lacking charisma and character to unapologetically remain conservative. By the way-it works! Look at what Mark Harris did in the burbs around Meck, he won! Upward mobility is a real thing and reaching out to other ethnic groups is a positive too-all people need to hear this message. Be weary of many of the millineal crowd around Wake. I’ve heard more nonsense from that lot thanks anything about limited government and economic freedom.
At this point everyone should realize the GOP isn’t the solution it’s part of the problem. It’s not left vs right it’s the State vs you!! Check out the Mises Institute or the Tenth Amaendment center. Read Rothbard and Bastiat. There are lots of people working for Liberty. The GOP ain’t it!!!
These Know Nothings need to get real and look at what is happening in elections to parties of the right that try to move left or move to the center, and indeed even for center-left parties that play to the center. The wreakage of those parties litters the electoral landscape all over the world in elections this year. It is a losing gambit.
Take Germany. Since she came to power, Angela Merkel has been taking Germany’s CDU to the left on a wide front – same sex marriage, climate change, wind and solar power, muliculturalism. etc. – and the results have shown in a steady downward trend in the party’s election results. This year in the national election, they received the lowest percentage in the CDU’s history and they have subsequently been clobbered in state elections as well, leading Merkel to give up the party leadership.
Just to their southeast, Austria was a very different story in its election this year because the leadership of its center-right party, the Austrian Peoples Party moved the opposite direction – father to the right. Its dynamic new 28-year old leader, Sebastian Kurz took the party the farthest right it has been since World War II, embracing issues like cutting taxes and stopping illegal immigration. They won a smashing victory, with Kurz becoming the world’s youngest prime minister.
Or take Italy’s election this year. Silvio Berlusconi moved his center-right Forza Italia farther right, advocating deportation of all illegal aliens in Italy, and made major gains. A party even further to the right, the Northern League, made even more gains. Meanwhile the center-left Democratic Party which occupied the center ground, was decimated, winning in only one of Italy’s regions and losing over half of its seats.
Or closer to home, look at this year’s election in the Canadian province of Ontario, Canada’s most populous and most industrialized. For 15 years, the Conservative Party had been taking a centrist approach and kept losing to the Liberal Party. This year, its new leader Doug Ford took the party hard to the populist right, campaigning on lower taxes and ending the wind and solar green energy boondoggle. The result was the biggest defeat of a sitting government in Canadian history, with parliament going from a 55 to 28 Liberal majority to a 76 to 7 Conservative majority. The Liberals do not even hold enough seats to officially be recognized as a party in the new provincial parliament.
Ending the green energy boondoggle was also the key to ending 16 years of Labour rule in the state of South Australia this year. The election was touted as a referendum on wind and solar energy, and the conservative coalition which campaigned against wind and solar convincingly won the day and ended Labour rule.
Center left parties that clung to the center also got left in the dust in elections this year. Germany’s Social Democrats received their lowest percentage this year since the Kaiser was on the throne. In Austria, the Social Democrats went from the largest party to the third largest, as two parties to their right each got more votes. In the Csech Republic, the Social Democrats went from the largest party and holding the prime minster’s office to sixth largest. The Czechs put a populist nationalist party led by a billionaire called the “Czech Trump” in first place, with the staunchly conservative Civic Democrats in second, and a new populist nationalist party calling for banning Islam and a referendum on leaving the EU tied for third with the anti-establishment Pirate Party.
Elections this year around the world tell the tale. A path to the center is a path to political oblivion.
This effort to change your political position just to keep a seat is how Charlotte City Council got in the state it is in today. Over 20 years ago the GOP sought to compromise with Democrats over redistricting and started the slide towards irrelevance. When you start to govern in a manner that will appease a democratic majority you do in fact become a rhino by definition. When you seek to somehow soften the liberal agenda in attempt to hold some power in an area where you have none you weaken the entire Republican brand. When Republicans in major media areas start to talk like Democrats those who live in the surrounding areas start to give up on Republicans in general. This blurring of lines allows liberalism to become seen as more the norm and it continues to spread. The fact is to effectively debate a conservative position you cannot weaken it to any long-term good just to try and forestall the inevitable change that comes with growing urban areas hell-bent on being”world-class”. We have an entire generation behind us that needs to hear clear un-watered down debate from a conservative position or like anything else that is ignored it die
It’s going to take years, perhaps a decade or more, to recover from our self-inflicted wounds–and we need to realize that we may never recover. We may become a permanent minority party again in NC. Pat McCrory, Bob Edmunds, and Margaret Spellings showcase GOP failures. There are others, but these three personify the wreckage, and the cause of the wreckage.
Losing the Supreme Court seats in 2016 (Edmunds) and 2018 (Jackson) is entirely the fault of legislative leaders Berger and Moore who pushed through the badly flawed election methods that caused those losses. Tim Moore pushed the stupid non-partisan election, something Democrats favor, in 2016, against the will of the entire House GOP caucus which wanted a partisan election (thanks, John Blust for revealing that!). Berger and Moore should be reduced to backbenchers for those entirely avoidable debacles.
If we want to see what works in winning elections, we just need to look at the recent elections. In the Senate, our candidates wrapped themselves around President Trump and his policies and we gained seats. In the House, the image was of wimpy centrist Paul Ryan, and we lost seats. The two incumbent GOP Senators who went down, in Nevada and Arizona, were both incumbents who had initially positioned themselves very aloof from Trump and tried belatedly to embrace him, which did not work out so well because they did not seem sincere. In the seats where we beat Democrat incumbents, it was with GOP challengers who embraced Trump and where Trump campaigned for them.
Then, lets look at the major swing state of Florida, one of the states with the largest share of suburban vote. The winning GOP candidates there, one for an open seat for Governor and one defeating a Democrat incumbent for Senate, were both very strong conservatives. The new governor, Ron deSantis, was a conservative Freedom Caucus member of Congress, while the new Senator, Rick Scott was a staunch conservative as governor and strongly embraced President Trump as a Senate candidate.
The Trump train is the one to ride to victory, not the McCain / Flake train.