Tag: North Carolina

Religious Right Voters in N.C. and Virginia Are Uneasy about Romney’s Money and the Mormon Church

Jon Ponder

North Carolina and Virginia are both large swing states — the tenth and twelfth most populous states, respectively — where the political polarity between left and right could not be more extreme. Both states are home to millions of multiethnic white-collar liberals and moderates, most of whom live in the urban enclaves, as well as roughly the same numbers of rural, white evangelical voters who hold extreme, often fantastical right-wing views.

Thirty-five percent of voters overall, and the same proportion of lower- and middle-income white Bible Belt voters, say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is Mormon.

Pres. Obama won both states in 2008, but in the current campaign, it has become conventional wisdom that he will likely lose North Carolina and win Virginia — although these predictions are not supported in the most recent polls. A PPP survey released on Monday found the president up by 1 point — 49 percent to 48 percent — in North Carolina, while a local poll in Virgina found that Romney was up by 4 points there, 49 percent to 45 percent.

In most states where polling is close, the race will be decided by moderate swing voters, and while that is true for the most part in North Carolina and Virginia, the Romney campaign has an additional worry: an evangelical base with a generations-deep suspicion of outsiders, especially those of different faiths, including Jews and Muslims, of course, but also Catholics and Mormons.

Reuters has been in the field in Virginia talking with white Bible Belt voters and found that many of the say they are concerned about Mitt Romney’s wealth and his religion:

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North Carolina Republicans Delusional Over Osama Bin Laden

Trish

15%

North Carolina Republicans that answered the question, “Who do you think deserves more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?” with Mitt Romney. Another 56% of Republicans told Public Policy Polling (PPP) they weren’t sure, while only 29% could bring themselves to admit that Pres. Obama should get more credit. While the president is enjoying a post convention bounce nationwide, he moved up only one point in the battleground state, from 48-48 the week before the event to 49-48 immediately after.

Art Pope: In 2010, A Koch Bros’ Mini-Me Bought the Legislature of the 10th Largest State for $2.2 Mil

Jon Ponder

Art Pope, the right-wing extremist, multimillionaire owner of low-end retail outlets, Roses and Maxway stores, in eastern North Carolina, spent $2.2 million on local legislative races in 2010 and flipped the N.C. Legislature from blue to red for the first since 1870.

Jane Mayer profiles him in the New Yorker:

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Gov. Perdue: The ‘Thin Blue Line’ in North Carolina

Jon Ponder

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One of the casualties of the tea party takeover last year was the North Carolina Legislature, where Republicans gained control for the first time in over a century. Since then, the tea bagger brigade has done its best to turn North Carolina, historically the most moderate of the Old Confederate states, into Kansas, particularly by passing a series of draconian laws targeting women’s reproductive rights.

The only person with the power to stop them is the state’s embattled Democratic governor, Bev Perdue, who has issued a series of vetoes that represent a profile in courage. Substituting for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, Mellissa Harris-Perry — a graduate of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem who also received her PhD from Duke University in Durham — covered Perdue’s plight and put into the context of the political history of North Carolina in a way that only someone who has lived in the state could understand.

Kansas Hate Group Will Protest at Elizabeth Edwards’ Funeral in Raleigh on Saturday

Jon Ponder
Left: Counter-protesters use American flags to hide hateful signs carried by Westboro cult members. Right: Elizabeth Edwards.
Left: Counter-protesters use American flags to hide hateful signs carried by Westboro cult members at a funeral earlier this year. Right: Elizabeth Edwards.

Raleigh News & Observer:

Westboro Baptist Church, a group with a history of staging protests at funerals and issuing anti-gay statements, is planning to picket the Saturday funeral of Elizabeth Edwards.

The group said it will picket outside Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh from 12:15 until 1 p.m. when the funeral is scheduled to begin.

The group, based in Topeka, Kan., travels nationally to picket funerals.

The group came into the national spotlight when members picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a young man from Wyoming who was beaten to death by two men because of his homosexuality. Westboro has protested at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and well-known people such as Fred Rogers, Coretta Scott King and Jerry Falwell.

Lately, decent Americans have been peacefully counter-protesting this hate group by blocking their signs with large American flags. If you live in the Triangle area and you’re free on Saturday, the church is at 228 West Edenton Street downtown, a few blocks from the state capitol. Flags are optional.

NC07: GOP-T Candidate Who Shot Two Unarmed Iraqis Likely to Be Elected to Congress

Jon Ponder

art-nymag-pantanoThe atmosphere around the 2010 midterm elections has been as charged with the potential for violence as any since the Vietnam era, at least. The poisoning of the political environment began last summer when cable news ran video of tea baggers throwing tantrums over the president’s birth certificate and similar issues at congressional town hall meetings. A little later, gun nuts made a show of loitering around presidential event venues carrying loaded rifles and handguns.

During the primaries, Nevada tea bagger U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle treasonously threatened “Second Amendment remedies” — in other words, armed insurrection against the United States — if the elections don’t go her way. Just last week, Rev. Stephen Broden, a tea bagger candidate for Congress in Texas’ 30th District proclaimed that armed revolution against the U.S. government was “not off the table,” if tea baggers fail to win control of Congress next Tuesday.

In just the past two weeks, there have been two incidents of tea bagger thugs threatening and even assaulting liberals at rallies and one instance of hired private security goons “arresting” a reporter for demanding answers from a Senate candidate about his record.

Now it appears that voters in two House districts are prepared to elect tea bagger candidates who are war criminals — literally.

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NC Sen: Dem Elaine Marshall Moving Up – Kos: ‘Most Winnable Race of Cycle Ignored By DSCC, This One Ain’t Over’

Jon Ponder

As a long-time Tar Heel in my past life, N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall‘s campaign to unseat GOP Sen. Richard Burr has been on my radar for months. Burr — an ideological intellectual featherweight along the lines of Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell and former Sen. Lauch Faircloth — is the biggest political embarrassment to my home state since the retirement of the bizarre racist homophobe Jesse Helms.

Marshall is North Carolina’s first woman secretary of state — she defeated NASCAR legend Richard Petty for the job in 1996, 53 percent to 45 percent. She has been running a smart, effective campaign on a shoe string, but with no cash to buy ads, her polling has been so anemic that Sen. Burr has already taken a “victory lap” tour around the state. Talk about measuring the drapes.

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Palin Used Teleprompters to Deliver NRA Keynote Speech

Jon Ponder

Palin at NRA in convention in Charlotte with two teleprompters in view
Palin at NRA in convention in Charlotte on May 14, 2010, with two teleprompters in view
After sneeringly referring to President Obama as “a charismatic guy with a teleprompter” in February, Sarah Palin apparently required two of the prompting devices when she delivered the keynote address to the National Rifle Association convention in Charlotte yesterday.

It’s unclear whether she has used teleprompters in the recent past, and if so, how often — but in February, during her appearance before a tea party conclave, she was caught red-handed, so to speak, with crib notes written on the palm of her hand. Around that same time, during a Fox News softball interview, she said she didn’t want to be the leader of the tea bagger movement because, “It’s much bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter. It is the people’s movement. It’s about the people and I’m proud to be a part of this.”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, when she was the Republican vice presidential nominee, Palin was a serial user of teleprompters. We posted a gallery of photos of Palin using teleprompters at about 20 separate events on Pensito Review’s Facebook page .

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President Bush’s Response to Harry Taylor

Jon Ponder

Here is President Bush’s response to criticisms from Harry Taylor on April 6, 2006, in Charlotte:

THE PRESIDENT: I’m going to start off with what you first said, if you don’t mind, you said that I tap your phones — I think that’s what you said. You tapped your phone — I tapped your phones. Yes. No, that’s right. Yes, no, let me finish.

I’d like to describe that decision I made about protecting this country. You can come to whatever conclusion you want. The conclusion is I’m not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program, and I’ll tell you why. We were accused in Washington, D.C. of not connecting the dots, that we didn’t do everything we could to protect you or others from the attack. And so I called in the people responsible for helping to protect the American people and the homeland. I said, is there anything more we could do.

And there — out of this national — NSA came the recommendation that it would make sense for us to listen to a call outside the country, inside the country from al Qaeda or suspected al Qaeda in order to have real-time information from which to possibly prevent an attack. I thought that made sense, so long as it was constitutional. Now, you may not agree with the constitutional assessment given to me by lawyers — and we’ve got plenty of them in Washington — but they made this assessment that it was constitutional for me to make that decision.

I then, sir, took that decision to members of the United States Congress from both political parties and briefed them on the decision that was made in order to protect the American people. And so members of both parties, both chambers, were fully aware of a program intended to know whether or not al Qaeda was calling in or calling out of the country. It seems like — to make sense, if we’re at war, we ought to be using tools necessary within the Constitution, on a very limited basis, a program that’s reviewed constantly to protect us.

Now, you and I have a different — of agreement on what is needed to be protected. But you said, would I apologize for that? The answer — answer is, absolutely not. (Applause.)