Roy Cooper: The next Bill Clinton? (or John Edwards ???)
The current state of our US Senate race has national figures in both party establishments swooning over Roy Cooper. He’s projecting a “moderate” image, we’re told. He’s a southerner, we’re told, who doesn’t scare people like Pelosi, Obama, Newsom, Sanders, Harris and AOC do. (*Oh, and look at all the races he’s won in years when Republicans have done well in-state.*)
You can click on this link (Roy Cooper) just below our masthead to find an archive of info that shoots all that down.
Trial attorney John Edwards knocked the political world for a loop in 1998 when he took out incumbent conservative senator Lauch Faircloth. Much of Edwards’ campaign rhetoric focused on the heartbreak he and his wife felt over the death of their child in a swimming pool accident, and how they made the pool equipment people pay dearly in court. *HOW could you vote against that?*
Toward the end of the campaign – and during the early part of his term – Edwards started hinting that his views were more in line with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro drum-circle crowd. Edwards went right to work positioning himself for a spot on the Democrats’ national ticket.
It’s pretty clear that national Democrats and folks close to Roy have the same end in mind for our former governor. Look at the success they had with Jimmy Carter (1976) and Bill Clinton (1992,1996). Edwards and his drawl arguably helped make the presence of Massachusetts commie John Kerry on the 2004 national ticket more palatable to voters.
I listened to a podcast out of DC this morning where the subject of Roy Cooper came up. The anchor talked about Cooper’s perception as a *moderate.*. They played audio from supposed Trump supporters in NC who were now going with Cooper. One of these alleged Trump-ists talked about how ol’ Roy stood tough against “The Congress in Raleigh.”
One thing Cooper has in common with Bill Clinton – other than governing a southern state – is being married to a mean Yankee attorney who goes by three names. Do you remember the lovely Mrs. Cooper bragging about *flipping off* some kids holding American flags? WE do:
Scarlett O’Hara, she ain’t.
(I don’t remember Dot Helms ever flipping off little kids.)
To an honest observer, it appears the GOPe in Raleigh has simply been allowing Cooper to win – to come out smelling like roses.
Since 2004, Roy Cooper is the only statewide candidate to ever be allowed to go unopposed (2012) in the general election. In the 2016, gubernatorial race, the NCGOP stood idly by while Cooper openly encouraged boycotts of our state. That same year – the state GOP also had little to say about then-AG Roy Cooper letting the state crime lab get so backlogged and out of control that localities had to hire private labs so evidence could get to court in a timely manner. There was also the rape kit processing fiasco. As governor and AG, Roy Cooper stood strong behind the idea of using race as a determining factor in prosecution.
The Republican legislature passed a common-sense piece of legislation stating that men and women must be restricted to their respective locker rooms and restrooms. It was an attempt to stop liberal judges and left-wing city councils from lifting gender restrictions on locker rooms and restrooms. Cooper didn’t like that.
In the end, instead of fighting Cooper’s quixotic assault, the GOP majority in the legislature repealed the gender restrictions and Cooper ended up looking like a conquering hero.
Republican governor Pat McCrory stood strong against Medicaid expansion. He called for fraud to be sufficiently weeded out of the program. McCrory also expressed concerns about the expansion’s potential stress on state finances.
GOP leaders in the legislature stuck with that for a little while. But then Tim Moore and Phil Berger ran an expansion through the state legislature. It made Cooper look like some kind of bipartisan, deal-making genius. (Never mind that this deal took a BIG weapon out of the armory of Cooper critics.)
In 2018, there was also the appearance that Cooper and his team had established a slush-fund and pay-for-play scheme surrounding the construction of a new gas pipeline in North Carolina. There was some noise from the legislature about forming an investigative committee and hiring an investigator. And then it all just quietly goes away.
In 2012, the same year Roy Cooper was allowed to go unopposed, Cooper’s DOJ settled in court with the Obama DOJ about the housing of mental patients in nursing homes. The settlement agreed to by Cooper, calls for the state to pay for furnishings and housing so that these mental cases can get out of the nursing homes and live on their own independently. Let’s see — folks with mental problems that keep them from functioning properly living among you and me unsupervised. *What could go wrong? *
Cooper also never got properly held accountable for the job losses and economic damage his COVID-era policies inflicted on our state.
There’s also the shady solar farm transactions involving Cooper and his family. Yet, the GOP has been strangely silent. Likely, because so many on their side have gotten shady over solar as well.
It’s a shame that Trump and his RNC force-fed us this horrible candidate and horrible campaign to oppose Cooper. If I’d had the free ride Cooper has had for so long, I’d be smelling like roses too.
It’s a terrible choice: a candidate registered with your party that has contempt for you and what you stand for versus a candidate registered with the other party that also has contempt for you and what you stand for.
We survived Kay Hagan and John Edwards. We’ll likely survive this too. But it’s a shame. Because this really didn’t have to happen like this.
