Voter Backlash to Trump, Bathroom Law Put North Carolina GOP at risk

Teachers protesting North Carolina GOP policies harmful to public schools.

Few states have witness the toxic policies that occur when Republicans control the state legislature than North Carolina where the GOP controlled legislature has pandered shamelessly to Christofascists while ignoring the interest of the business community, engaged in racially based gerrymandering and slashed public education funding.  The irony is that until a few years ago, North Carolina was largely a middle of the road state that prided itself on being open for business and moderation.  Then came the GOP/Christofascist effort to use anti-LGBT animus and promises to Christian extremists to take control of the legislature.  Now, the backlash to Republican over reach and foul policies may be about to sweep over the state, aid by large scale hatred of the Trump/Pence regime.   A Piece in the Washington Post looks at a trend that one can only hope will damage the North Carolina GOP severely in November.  Here are highlights:

APEX, N.C. — The owner of a small vodka distillery near this traditionally Republican enclave in suburban Raleigh says he is so fed up with GOP leadership in the state capital that he took leave from his job to try to defeat a state senator.

A popular local weatherman in the state’s Appalachian Mountains with no experience in politics threw himself into a race to unseat a four-term GOP member of the state House.

And the daughter of a legendary former governor is taking her first crack at a run for office by challenging a Charlotte-area state House Republican with a promise to renew the legacy of her father, Jim Hunt, as a champion for education funding.

An unusual political battle is raging across North Carolina, where national and state Democrats have recruited an army of candidates and are pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to loosen a years-long Republican grip on a state legislature that has turned an otherwise evenly split state into a bastion for some of the country’s most conservative laws. Among them: a limit on transgender access to bathrooms that was ultimately repealed under pressure from business leaders, congressional district maps that courts have ruled were designed to curtail the voting power of African Americans and education spending levels that have sparked mass protests at the state Capitol.

The campaign reflects an often-overlooked subplot of the Democratic Party’s broader push to engineer a “blue wave” across the country in the November midterms — tapping into voter anger over President Trump as well as Republican policies on school funding, taxes and health care to chip away at GOP dominance in state capitals.

And Republican candidates must contend with President Trump’s unpopularity among Democrats as well as unaffiliated voters, whose numbers have been growing dramatically in recent years.

While they [Democrats] face steep odds in their quest to win the legislature outright, some Republicans here have begun to acknowledge their party appears increasingly likely to lose the veto-proof supermajorities that have been key to much of their success in thwarting [Governor] Cooper. For that, Democrats must pick up just four seats in the House and six seats in the Senate.

“If you’re a Republican and you’re not nervous, you should be,” said Carter Wrenn, a longtime GOP operative in the state who made his name working for the late senator Jesse Helms.

Democrats sense a potential voter backlash over what they call Republican overreach on a range of issues — from the bathroom bill and gerrymandering to a new push by GOP lawmakers to block the governor’s power to appoint judges, the state electoral board and other executive-branch panels. Democrats have recruited candidates to run in all 170 legislative districts for the first time that anyone can remember, with the party’s Break the Majority political committee hiring 70 full-time field organizers and banking nearly $6 million — enough to put its spending on par with state Republicans for the first time in a decade.

Indivisible, the grass roots organization that formed after Trump’s election, has launched a “Flip NC” campaign targeting 20 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate.

For Democrats to succeed this year, they will need voters like Marla Sloane, 60, a registered Republican who runs an Internet business selling novelty items from her home. Sloane showed up last week at a meet-and-greet for Searcy, the Democrat running for Senate.

“I don’t hear any state Republicans saying, ‘We’re standing up against ‘Trump,’” said Sloane, who voted for GOP presidential nominees John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 but could not get herself to vote for Trump. “I think this is a very scary time in America where we’re trying to make sense out of crazy. And I don’t see anyone standing up at the state level saying, ‘This isn’t right.’”

I hope the Democrat effort succeeds.  Similar hatred for Trump and racist and Christian extremist backed policy in large part set the stage for the Democrat sweep in Virginia in 2017.

Will the Hobby Lobby Ruling Come to Haunt Republicans?

I for one hope that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Hobby Lobby granting special rights to Christofascists will help fuel a major backlash against the self-centered, hypocrisy and hate filled "godly folks."  It is far past time that average Americans recognize the reality that today's conservative Christians are neither nice, decent, or in the last analysis even true Christians.   In the political sphere, some are suggesting that the triumph of special rights for Christofascists could come back to haunt the Republican Party both in the 2014 midterms and in the 2016 presidential contest.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at one such prediction.  Here are excerpts:

Many conservatives were celebrating when the court recently ruled that Hobby Lobby and other "closely held" corporations cannot be required to cover contraception for employees under the Affordable Care Act. Speaking on Sunday's "Meet the Press," however, Todd warned that the decision could potentially backfire for Republicans. 

The ruling gives Democrats an issue to campaign on, he said.

"Normally ... the social conservative movement used to quietly hope for losses on the Supreme Court because it gave them a political reason for existing, it gave them something to campaign for, it gave them somebody to beat up on the courts. What was fascinating post-Hobby Lobby is how frankly excited Democratic campaigns are acting, where it's like 'We have something to run on here on the left,'" Todd said.

Todd suggested the backlash is already apparent among white women ages 40 to 55, who will be crucial swing voters in this year's midterm elections. "These are the women that in 2010, they were leaning Republican at this time," he said. "This time, they haven't been."

As the image below highlights, it is the Christofascists who are daily persecuting others yet the moment they have someone stand up to their abuse they are immediatley crying and carrying on claiming that they are the ones being persecuted.   They are, in my view, disgusting and despicable people.

Fearing Rising Backlash, NRA Urges Gun Activists to Stand Down

Outside a Home Depot

Numerous businesses and restaurants across the country have faced off with gun carrying lunatics who seek to bring loaded weapons into the businesses and restaurants despite the owners' objections.  Much like the Christofascists who believe their are exempt from the laws governing others, these nutcases gun activists believe their rights trump those of property owners and business owners.  It is all too typical of the self-styled conservatives and supporters of unrestricted gun runs to be totally self-centered and not give a damn about the rights of others.  Sensing a possible - and much deserved - backlash, the NRA is seeking to get its lunatic followers to back off.  Mother Jones looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

The last couple of months have been rough for proponents of open-carry gun laws. No fewer than seven restaurant chains have taken a stand against firearms being brought to their businesses, after activists in Texas conducted provocative demonstrations in which they toted semi-automatic rifles into various eateries. Texas law allows rifles (though not handguns) to be carried on display in public, but some patrons and employees were unnerved and angered by the demonstrations, and a national group advocating for reforms, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, pressured the companies using social-media campaigns. After Mother Jones published videos of the gun activists in action, Sonic and Chili's Grill & Bar became the latest to officially reject guns on their premises.

There has also been a particularly dark side to the story of the gun activists: As I first reported in mid May, members of Open Carry Texas and their allies have used vicious tactics against people who disagree with them, including bullying and degrading women. Just last week they harassed a Marine veteran, pursuing him through the streets of Fort Worth on Memorial Day.

Evidently the National Rifle Association has come to realize that none of this is good for business. In an extraordinary move on Friday, the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action—the organization's powerful lobbying arm in Washington—issued a lengthy statement seeking to distinguish between "responsible behavior" and "legal mandates." It told the Texas gun activists in no uncertain terms to stand down.

"As gun owners, whether or not our decisions are dictated by the law, we are still accountable for them," the statement began. "If we exercise poor judgment, our decisions will have consequences…such as turning an undecided voter into an antigun voter because of causing that person fear or offense."
[The NRA] laid into those Texans "who have crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness."

To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one's cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates. 

The problem has been on the NRA's radar at least since April. . . . . 'Can't you do something to stop the rifle demonstrations?'" One lawmaker told Tripp that he'd gotten a phone call from the Republican mayor of Arlington—the site of several provocative open-carry incidents—who'd been "absolutely incensed." The demonstrations were seriously harming the overall mission to ease gun laws further, she said.

For the NRA, furthering its agenda in state capitols may not be the biggest concern at this point. In light of the recent corporate backlash, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick proposed late last week that the war over gun policy may now be fought more in the crucible of the free market. The battleground has grown to include retailers: An open-carry rally at a Home Depot in suburban Fort Worth on Saturday drew roughly 150 armed citizens as well as some withering criticism, according to the Dallas Morning News. 

The NRA has also backtracked recently from its long-held stance against laws meant to disarm domestic abusers—a major factor in gun violence against women—by quietly supporting recent such legislation in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The NRA's ability to wield outsize political control may now be starting to change, too—at least with some of the hardcore base to which it has long catered. On Sunday, Open Carry Texas dismissed the criticism of its tactics: "The NRA has lost its relevance and sided with the gun control extremists and their lapdog media," the group tweeted, adding, "We don't fight for rights at the discretion of the NRA."

As readers know, I support strict gun control laws and view these "gun activists" as lunatics who in no way should be lose with firearms in public.

Mormons and Proposition 8: PR Disaster and Election Fraud?

I must say that I am somewhat enjoying seeing the Mormon Church and its sheep like followers reeling from the backlash from the Mormon role in passage of Propostion 8. On the legal front, both the Salt Lke Tribune and 365gay.com are reporting that the State of California is going to move forward with an investigation of possible election fraud by the Mormon Church. Not only would a finding of fraud cost the Mormon Church money in terms of fines, but it would lay a great groundwork for further backlash against Mormons in general. I cannot think of a more deserving bunch to suffer the consequences of their hate based actions. Didn't the Church leadership ever stop to think that actions have consequences and not always the ones expected? Here are some highlights from the Salt Lake Tribune:

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(San Francisco, California) California officials have begun an investigation into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to see if it broke the law during the campaign for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The California Fair Political Practices Commission said it wants to determine if the Church accurately described its role in the battle over Proposition 8.

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The Church put an estimated $25 million into the battle to end gay marriage in California. If the Commission finds the Church broke state election laws, it could be fined up to $5,000 per violation. The Commission also could file an additional civil lawsuit. Porter said, seeking remedies up to three times the amount that was misrepresented or misreported.

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In terms of other bad PR being reaped by Mormons, the Salt Lake Tribune also has a story that looks at the negative experience that Mormons across the country are enduring. One would think that the allegedly infallible Church leaders might have foreseen some of this. Personally, I hope that backlash only gets worse. Here are some highlights.

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Although they live a continent away from California, LDS Church members Gregory and JaLynn Prince, of Washington, D.C., still have felt the backlash from their church's involvement in the traditional marriage initiative known as Proposition 8. Their daughter, Lauren, a Boston University student, has lost friends over the issue, while their son, an LDS missionary in San Bernardino, Calif., has had a disproportionate number of potential converts cancel appointments.
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About two weeks ago, during a first-ever class on Mormonism at Wesley Theological Seminary, where the Princes have built bridges for years, students pointedly asked them: "What was your church thinking?" "We are not taking sides on the issue, but the way this was done has hurt our people and the church's image," JaLynn Prince said. "It reminds me of the naive public relations strategy we had regarding the Equal Rights Amendment." In some minds, the so-called "Mormon moment" heralded at the start of 2008 has stopped short. Now, angry opponents of Proposition 8 are demonstrating at Mormon temples, accusing the church of being anti-gay.

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The Mormon push for Proposition 8 reinforces what people already think of Mormons, he [Mark Silk, professor of religion in public life at Trinity College] said, "that they have a lot of money and are willing to work for a socially conservative cause." That image may hurt the LDS Church with a wide swath of the American public. Mark Silk, professor of religion in public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., thinks the visceral opposition to Proposition 8 is much more consequential for the LDS Church than either the Romney campaign or the perceived association with polygamy.

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It is not clear, however, whether the LDS Church will soon jump into another political fray. "Politics is a tough game, especially at this visceral level where one side is talking about religion and the other about rights, " said Gordon, the Penn scholar. "I would be surprised to see them do this again. They really need to heal some wounds."