NCGOP’s MeToo dilemma: One problem gone. How many more to deal with?

Differentiation is important in sales, marketing, and even politics.  It’s the art of demonstrating what makes your offering so much more appealing than what the competition is offering.  Why should consumers dump their current choice and run to your option? 

At one time, the GOP offered a stark difference from the Democrats.  At one point (1993-99), North Carolina had the two most conservative senators in DC. In 1994 and 2010, the GOP swept to majorities in DC and Raleigh.  Voters were led to believe the GOP represented smaller government, lower taxes, and smarter budgeting, among other positive traits.  The other party did not.

As time has moved on from 2010, elected Republicans got comfortable.  The party platform wasn’t as much fun anymore.  The national and state GOP began making willingness to run with an (R) by your name more important than any commitment to any specific issue positions.

Now, we’re blessed with GOP majorities who cannot agree on the concept that smaller government, lower taxes, and smarter budgeting are a good thing.  

THAT is why we don’t have budget agreements in Raleigh or DC — despite the fact that the alleged conservative party is in charge in both places.  The two major parties have been reduced to a competitive dynamic not unlike the one facing groups like Kiwanis or Rotary. 

Taxes and spending.  We used to be able to easily attack Democrats for taxing too much and spending too much. Right now, we can’t get a state budget deal done because we can’t get the Republican-controlled legislative chambers to agree on cutting spending and taxes. In Washington, the budget fight is being labeled a “Democrat shutdown.”  Never mind that both chambers have REPUBLICAN majorities.

But the problem is DEEPER.  The party establishment there – like in Raleigh – has sought out candidates based on their willingness to wear the (R) much more than their comfort with a set of issue positions.  THAT is why we regularly have 50-75 US House Republicans and 5-7 US Senate Republicans voting against clearly conservative positions.

Oh, the public rhetoric from the parties is stark. It’s ‘red meat’ for the rubes back home.  But getting down to the bare bones of the matter:  There is not really much difference between most elected pols. 

Look at our US Senate race.  DC has anointed a blank slate for the GOP nomination in North Carolina.  Michael Whatley has been a lobbyist.  He got elected state party chairman three times as a result of three very suspect, dubious internal party elections.  Donald Trump has said nice things about him.  But there is no real clear evidence that Whatley, if elected, will be a good soldier in defense of the Trump agenda.  (His mentor, Thom Tillis, sure hasn’t been.) 

Big Spending.  The NCGOP and the RNC have attempted to hit presumptive Democrat nominee Roy Cooper on his economic policies. The problem?  State spending grew while the GOP controlled the pursestrings in Raleigh.  And there are plenty of pics of Cooper and GOP leaders hugging, smooching and shaking hands over the deal to expand Medicaid and saddle taxpayers with a yuuuuuuuuuge financial burden. (Don’t know what happened to weeding out the fraud and abuse, first.) 

Marching with Black Lives Matter.  Since we can’t use economic policy, we have to go to ‘red meat’ social attacks.  Cooper did march with BLM in Raleigh in 2020.  I think he went a few blocks surrounded by bodyguards, and then left.

The NCGOP / Whatley problem? 2020 was Whatley’s first full year as state chairman.  He allowed the Young Republicans to get a permit for BLM to join them in a protest march outside NCGOP HQ in Raleigh.  Both sides in this Senate race played footsie with Black Lives Matter.

Soft on Crime.  We have a Democrat who served four terms as state Attorney General and two as governor.  A lot of oversight over law enforcement there.

Whatley has 2.5 terms as state GOP chairman under his belt.  No crime fighting to oversee there.

There was a legitimate issue against Cooper in 2016.  The state crime lab, which he as attorney general oversaw, was so inefficient and backed up that local governments were having to contract with private labs to get their CSI work processed in time for trials. But the GOP campaign against Cooper in 2016 would not touch that, for some reason.

And Cooper won.

You could bring it up against Cooper now. But how does it look mentioning it for the first time 10 years after the fact? And what did the GOP – led by Mike Whatley – do to fix it?

Whatley has tried to blame Cooper for the stabbing murder of the Ukrainian woman on that Charlotte train, as well as for a number of other local crimes in Charlotte. You can argue about how much involvement Cooper had in those cases.  But they do reveal that the population of elected Democrats out there is rife with people who are soft on crime.

And you still have to ask:  How did Cooper get elected the top law enforcement official in the state FOUR TIMES if he is so weak on crime? 

In DC, Republicans are trying to wrap the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein around Democrats’ necks. Democrats are trying to wrap Epstein around Trump, as well.

Meanwhile, North Carolina Republicans found a convicted sex offender-turned-Democrat leader to wrap around Cooper.

The problem?  There has also been a convicted sex offender hanging around with the creme de la creme of the NCGOP for years.  It appears that even Mike Whatley had ties to him and even helped him.

Journalist Tom Fiedler – a Pulitzer Prize winner who brought down 1984 Democrat presidential candidate Gary Hart — reintroduced North Carolina to NCGOP leader Harvey West. It appears West served time on charges of sex with minors back around the turn of the century.  Fiedler raised issues about how it looks for the GOP to be going after Democrats and Cooper, specifically, over sex offender ties when the NCGOP and, specifically, Whatley were close to Harvey West. 

A few days after the Fiedler piece ran, West submitted his resignation from a regional NCGOP chairmanship position.  While it appears many NCGOP leaders had forgiven and forgot with West, that might not have been the case with the DC crowd who were likely hearing about West for the first time. 

What a Senator Cooper might do.  There’s always that ‘bogey man’ to raise.  The NCGOP did something like that against Cal Cunningham (D) in 2020 trying to scare people back into the Tillis corner.  Well, it worked — barely.

But knowing what we know about Tillis since then,  has he really been much better than a Senator Cunningham? 

The Tillis ties.  It’s clear that Michael Whatley has a problem with the Republican base.  His long, close relationship with Thom Tillis does not help.  As state chairman, Whatley spent countless amounts of energy defending and protecting Tillis from conservative criticism.  It’s well known that Tillis and his wife first elevated Whatley to political prominence in the state and were major players in getting him elected and reelected state party chairman.  Tillis even appeared at the press conference announcing Whatley’s final reelection run for the state post. The senator delivered a rousing endorsement speech for Whatley there.

At a time when the lame duck Tillis is on the last nerve of every good conservative out there, how can Whatley stay silent on his mentor’s behavior? How can he convince us he’s not Tillis 2.0, but really a break from the past and a breath of fresh air?