How are people so blind?
Just add this to North Carolina's recent past. Those Republicans have been directly assaulting the institution of democracy since 2012. The historical record involves the Supreme Court calling North Carolina Republicans out for unconstitutionally-strict Voter ID laws, the shutting down of select voter polls, and clear racial gerrymandering. The record includes gross court-packing and even a repealed law that gave the GOP-led state congress the power to appoint the newly elected Democrat Governor's gubernatorial Cabinet members! I'm not making this stuff up people:
2013: The U.S. Supreme Court once again declined to reinstate North Carolina's strict voter ID law, which was struck down in 2012 after a court ruled that it was intentionally designed to stop African-Americans from voting. In its ruling, the appeals court said the law was intentionally designed to discriminate against black people. North Carolina legislators had requested data on voting patterns by race and, with that data in hand, drafted a law that would "
target African-Americans with almost surgical precision," the court said.
2016: When, despite these efforts to rig the election, a Democrat won the governorship, the controlling
Republican Senate granted itself the authority to confirm gubernatorial cabinet appointments in order to pack the executive branch with Republicans, thus trying to render the new governor somewhat powerless. This law was later overturned by the courts.
2016: They also
passed to shrink the state court of appeals by three seats, thereby stealing three judicial appointments from the new governor.
Oh, and North Carolina isn't alone. This "****-hole" extremist trash has been going on across the nation wherever the GOP has managed to gain power, largely since a "Kenyan-born African Muslim Arab (um...but not "black")" dared enter the White House in 2008; and then especially after he dared to win re-election in 2012. We have seen this in North Carolina,
Wisconsin,
Georgia,
North Dakota, and
Indiana. I'm sure there are others.
And why not? What has been the example of their leaders? What should anybody expect from
the Party that made "No" an official policy in 2008? (Paul Ryan is the great irony in this story, by the way.) Donald Trump first sought to help the so-called Tea Party de-legitimize the 2008 election through "birther" bull **** and then he even went as far as to try to de-legitimize his own victory in 2016 by falsely declaring that millions of illegals voted. We have the GOP-led D.C. Congress refusing to consider a seated President's nominee for the Supreme Court for an entire year in 2016, for the very first time in American history. The GOP created a platform based on being an irrational asshole; and after working with right-wing media outlets (FOX) for years to create an unfocused and hateful, irrational mob in its constituency, the GOP actually begged that irrational constituency not to vote for a complete asshole in Donald Trump as far-right extremist organizations began showing up with their support!
So, here's a toast to North Carolina. Showing America and the world what the American Right is all about anymore: People who would carry around a POW Vietnam War Veteran in 2008, and then **** all over him eight years later so that they could carry around a silver-spooned, spoiled-brat elitist who saw military service as beneath him while that former Vietnam War Veteran was a POW....skipped out on a Belleau Wood cemetery visit because of rain...skipped out on a Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremony because of phone calls....