North Carolina’s New Tea Party Majority Puts Higher Education in the Crosshairs

McCrory
With the election of Pat McCory as governor last November, Republicans have taken complete control of North Carolina’s government — they won majorities the legislature in the 2010 nationwide tea party landslide — for the first time since the GOP was the liberal party, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

Predictably, however, the newly empowered Republicans in North Carolina have begun to do what their GOP colleagues in other states have done when voters put them in charge — they are overreaching.

McCrory caused a firestorm among Democrats and other fans of higher learning last week in an interview on a right-wing radio show hosted by George Bush Sr.’s drug czar, Bill Bennett, by attacking one of North Carolina’s most historic success stories — its public universities and community college system:

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