Re. the belated concession of NC Gov. "Puppet Pat" McCrory: Good riddance to bad rubbish

Puppet Pat: Not smiling so much anymore?

by Ken

So North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, known to DWT readers as "Puppet Pat," has thrown in the towel on his failed reelection, after dragging the proceedings out with a series of crackpot accusations about election fraud -- only to see his margin of defeat hold fast as limited recounts began.

And it was by no means a given that Puppet Pat and the NC GOP would accept the election result. In the above-referenced NYT report on the governor's belated concession to NC Attorney General Roy Cooper, Richard Fausset notes:

The sealing of Mr. Cooper’s victory — he leads by just over 10,000 votes in the unofficial state tally — brings a modicum of relief to Democrats here. Many of them had feared a post-Election Day power play by North Carolina’s Republicans, who control the state’s General Assembly, where the Republicans in recent years have enacted aggressive gerrymandering plans and a law curtailing voter access that have been struck down by the federal courts. Some feared that the Republicans would take advantage of a law that allows contested elections to be settled by a vote of the legislature.

So, not gonna happen. Thank goodness for small favors.

My first response to the earlier news that Puppet Pat's lie-fueled demand for a recount wasn't going so well was: Is there really no price to be paid for pols' lying? Of course I had the president-elect in my thoughts as well, and judging by his example, the answer is "What're you, nuts? Of course not!" As long as the pol is telling the right kind of lies, which usually means the hard-core right-wing kind, they're not only tolerated but encouraged.

But with Puppet Pat, there's a wrinkle. His unexpected defeat -- running far behind, in the statewide vote count, both presidential candidate Donald Trump and reelected turdheap Sen. Richard Burr -- is routinely attributed to the mean-spirited "bathroom bill" he reluctantly signed, and I have no reason to doubt this. A certain number of NC voters seem to have cottoned to the fact that some forms of bigotry have become bad for business. Great!

However, when I hear Puppet Pat's name and reign referred to, alluded to in this snippet from the NYT account:

As a mayor of Charlotte, Mr. McCrory was known as a moderate and pragmatist, a reputation that attracted many Democrats to his 2012 campaign. But the legislature pushed, and he generally supported an ambitious conservative agenda, rolling back the state’s generous ballot-access rules. The legislature also passed expanded rights for gun owners, a private-school voucher plan, new abortion regulations and a tax overhaul that opponents criticized for favoring the wealthy.

What I think of is a terrific post our Noah wrote back in December 2013, "A tale of two Popes -- the one in the Vatican, who takes Jesus' words to heart, and the one in North Carolina." I'm going to take the liberty of reprising the start of that post:

There are two Popes in the news lately. Both represent organizations that claim to speak for Jesus Christ. One's name is Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis is the better-known of the two, and his actions befuddle and anger U.S. Republicans. The other's name is Art Pope. Art Pope is the North Carolina Republican Party's pope.

Unlike many past Popes, Francis seems to take the reported actions and words of Jesus to heart and uses his own words and actions to lead his organization toward the betterment of humanity. Art Pope plays for the other side.

While Pope Francis seeks to aid the poor and the powerless, even leaving the Vatican at night dressed as an ordinary priest to comfort the homeless, Art Pope's mission is to exploit the poor and the powerless to gain more power, even seeking to expand the numbers of poor in his state. Art Pope is a mini-me to the Koch Brothers. He has a lot of money but not Koch Brothers Kash, so for now he has been content to buy just one state out of 50.

As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

-- Jesus, as quoted in the Book of Matthew, 25:31-46

Art Pope preaches a very different gospel. He has used his material goods to elect and buy the best and truest form of Republican government he can. The end result has been a takeover of North Carolina by political perps that is as extreme as any since the days of segregation. But the agenda that Art Pope pushes is not based solely on race. Women, senior citizens, Hispanics, and students are all targets of this pope.

It is oligarchist Art Pope who has financed an insane asylum that serves as the North Carolina legislature and governor's office. He is now even Gov. Pat McCrory's budget director, all but officially making the governor his hand puppet.

In 2010, 75 percent of all the outside money that came into North Carolina's legislative elections came from groups backed by Art Pope. His candidates won 80 percent of those races. Pope's money then financed a 2012 election that was so successful for Republicans that it ended in this being the first time since 1870 that the Repug Party controlled the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, the General Assembly. Without Art Pope putting his money behind his agenda, there is no feo-fascist Gov. "Puppet Pat" McCrory; there are no attacks on the teachers of North Carolina (right down to removing money for instructional supplies).

In fact, Puppet Pat seems to think that education should exist only to train people for jobs -- vocational training for worker bees, as it were. Puppet Pat wants Pope's legislature to pass laws that would provide funds to universities "not based on how many butts in seats but how many of those butts can get jobs." Apparently McCrory never learned that education deals with the brains in your head. His stated outlook reveals that education is not about expanding the mind or improving society and moving it forward. As for the promised jobs, they haven't materialized, as his policies continue to damage the state economy.

Without people like Puppet Pat who are so willing to do the bidding of the money men, there is no chronic union-busting; there are no attacks on the voting rights of legal North Carolina citizens; there is no well-orchestrated attack on democracy itself. He is his state's Scott Walker. To Art Pope, just as to the Walker-backing Koch Brothers, there are the privileged few and "the least of these," with nothing in between: lords and serfs. It's a push back to the past -- way back. . . .

So all in all my response to Puppet Pat's graceless concession is: Good riddance to bad rubbish.

#