News report from August on the Moral Monday protest in Charlotte
After systematically gutting education and public welfare in North Carolina, hobbling the state’s economy, passing the worst voter suppression laws in the country and turning their once great state into a national laughing stock, Republicans in North Carolina took time out this week to whine about the rhetoric used against them by the people whom they are bent on oppressing:
State Republican Party Chairman Claude Pope said that recent “Moral Monday” protests, led by the NAACP and a network of liberal groups, have crossed rhetorical lines and unfairly attacked party leaders.
“Any time you get into a situation where you have inflammatory attacks, it’s not good for either side,” Pope said. “We want to bring the discussion back to the policies we’re bringing forward. Incendiary attacks don’t further that discussion.”
…Pope said he wasn’t worried from a political standpoint. Rather, he was trying to bring attention to behavior that newspaper and television reporters had given “a pass.” He pointed to two recent occasions in which protesters had, in his view, crossed the line.
Protesters in Charlotte last month were “holding signs with Confederate flag images and Jim Crow language,” Pope said. Those signs featured the faces of Gov. Pat McCrory, House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate leader Phil Berger against the backdrop of a Confederate battle flag to make a point about a recently passed elections law bill. Pope said those images were “outrageous and unacceptable.”
He also pointed to Monday’s protests in front of the Governor’s Mansion.
“NAACP protesters carried around coffins in what was described bizarrely as a reference to tragic events in Birmingham 50 years ago,” Pope said.
Four young girls were killed in a church bombing five decades ago, helping to spark civil rights protests.
“How in the world does one stretch from the tragic event from the Birmingham bombings, an event likely perpetrated by a Democrat, to an open vitriolic attack on our new Republican governor?” Pope asked.
Asked why the Republican Party, which holds most of the political cards in the state right now, would even take notice of the protests, Pope said the party and its leaders wanted to focus on policies but were being unfairly smeared.
“When you start to use inflammatory rhetoric and you try to fan the flame that brings up a history of racism or violence perpetrated by folks who are no longer here, no longer around – to try to bring that kind of inflammatory rhetoric back and justify what they feel today – is totally off base. And one of the issues is the press seems to be buying into it.”
Pope said reporters had been slow to call out what Republicans see as “incendiary” remarks.
“I think what you need to understand is Republicans feel like the media has not been as responsible in highlighting the inflammatory nature of some of those attacks,” he said.
Asked for a response, the Rev. William Barber, president of the state conference of the NAACP, said he was praying for Pope and other Republican leaders.
And:
At least once political scientist said the Republican response to the Moral Monday protests shows the GOP is worried the demonstrations have become an “effective Democratic brand” that needs to be checked.
“To give it attention means they’re worried about it,” said Steve Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University.
