Year: 2013

McCrory Says Moral Monday Protests are Not Very Moral

Buck Banks

I go out in the crowd all of the time. Frankly, yesterday I went out and talked to several of them and they were not very respectful. They did not represent the majority of those who call themselves moral by cussing me out. But that’s the way things go some times.

— North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R), quoted by the Wilson Times, on the “Moral Monday” protests at the state capitol every week.

Voters: Democrats are Bad, but Republicans are Worse

Buck Banks

51%

Of Americans say Republicans are responsible for gridlock in Washington, D.C., while 35% percent say President Obama “lacks the skills to convince leaders of Congress to work together,” a new Quinnipiac poll finds. Asked another way, 53% say Obama is doing “too little” to compromise with congressional Republicans, but 68% of voters say congressional Republicans are doing “too little.” Said pollster Peter Brown: “Voters think the Democrats and Obama aren’t playing nice, but they think the Republicans are worse.”

GOP Is Out to Create a Black Democratic Party in the South

Buck Banks

In private discussions, Republicans in the South talk explicitly about their goal of turning the Democratic Party into a black party, and in many Southern states they have succeeded. African-American legislators make up the majority of state House and Senate Democratic caucuses in most of the Southern states.

— Thomas Edsall, writing in the New York Times Opinionator Blog.

Republican Lawmakers Apparently Have Come to Hate Lawmaking

Buck Banks

One of the novel developments in conservative thought during the Obama years is a burgeoning hatred not merely for government but for lawmaking. Before the Obama era, the ends of crafting laws divided the parties, but the means did not. The process of corralling votes, placating hold-outs, and hammering out compromises was not something either side especially loved — you’ve heard the classic line about watching the sausage get made — but also not something that one side disliked more than the other. But a hatred for lawmaking has emerged in the Obama years, first as a Republican tactic, and then as an apparently genuine belief system.

— Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine.