N.C. Republican Roundtable

Introducing ConservativeNC.com

2009-01-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

We invite you to join a new online community, ConservativeNC.com, which is dedicated to advancing conservative principles and conservative policies in North Carolina.

We have asked all members of the N.C. Republican Roundtable to begin blogging on ConservativeNC rather than here, and we encourage you to join the ConservativeNC community as well. To do so, simply visit the Web site and set up an account; you can then join in the discussion by commenting on items posted there.

Call to Sacrifice

2009-01-11T13:21:00.000-08:00

Video: ABC's This Week
Obama Tells Stephanapolous
Everyone Must Sacrifice For
"The Greater Good"

View the Clip HERE.

Pat McCrory never borrowed a dime to finance his campaign

2009-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Only four hours into her term as North Carolina's first female governor (if that's what she wants as her theme, so be it...) tireless Frank Rouse reports: BEVERLY WATCH:

Lets start off this edition of "Beverly Watch" with a link to a story about a N. C. Democrat Party fundraiser. Excerpts: The January 22 party at a private Raleigh home solicits donations from attendees ranging from $500 for a "Friend" to $10,000 for a "Host." Perdue's campaign finance reports show she and her husband Bob Eaves loaned her campaign more than $900,000 and the loans are outstanding.

A spokeswoman for the Democratic Party says the fundraiser was for the Party, not Perdue. Yet the invitation tells those wishing to attend to RSVP to Perdue's Web site: (- WRAL News Story)

And, now for the VIDEO!

Attached above is a copy of the invitation, and if all of this isn't enough, here's a blog entry from the Greensboro News and Record.

Raise hell about this. Don't let her make a mockery of the election laws. We've been pushed around too much by character-challenged Democrats. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

The gov-elect raising money through the Democrat Party to pay off her debt…this unlimited individual money, then transferred to pay back money she and her husband lent her campaign is wrong. Lending her campaign her own money and then getting paid back by powerful interests, after the election is over and without the public knowing before the election… is just wrong!

Pat McCrory never borrowed a dime to finance his campaign and finished debt free.

Frank A. Rouse, Morehead City
far@frankarouse.com
252-808-0050

Republican Revival Will Start in the States

2009-01-10T02:15:00.000-08:00

By STEVE MOORE

The Weekend Inteview: WSJ Online

Haley Barbour has a message for Republicans still dispirited by the November elections: "We've been in a lot worse shape than this. . . . When I first started working in politics during the Watergate era only 16% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans." He recalls one incident in the mid 1970s when "Mary Louise Smith, the chairman of the party, appointed a committee to change the name of the party. You can't get much lower than that."

Read more HERE.

Message from State Auditor Les Merritt - Final Day in Office

2009-01-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

Distributed via e-mail today

Dear Friends,

Today is my last day as your State Auditor. It has been a privilege and an honor to serve as The Taxpayers' Watchdog for the past four years, and I believe our team has made a positive difference for the people of North Carolina.

During the past four years, we accomplished a number of important things:

▪ Reduced a backlog of investigative audits -- some more than three years old -- by 76%.

▪ Took steps to ensure that state-funded non-profits, which spend hundreds of millions of your tax dollars, file the required reports disclosing how they spend your money. When I took office, nearly 1,000 of those non-profits had failed to file the required reports. We took action, and within a few months nearly 90% of that group had filed the required reports.

▪ In an effort to be pro-active and prevent problems from developing in the first place, we launched a new initiative to educate personnel from funding agencies and grant recipients on key issues related to compliance and transparency. Our staff has now trained in excess of 10,000 personnel from funding agencies and grant recipients.

▪ We shortened the processing time for non-profit reports from five months in 2005 to approximately three days in 2007.

▪ We exposed 27,000 invalid Social Security numbers being used in six separate state entities.

▪ In another effort to be pro-active, we developed a "strategic auditing" process to help identify unusual trends and potential problems in state spending. The strategic auditing process uses existing hardware, software and skills in the Information System Auditing Division to analyze millions of state transactions -- far more than normally are checked during a regular agency audit.

▪ In another effort to be pro-active, we launched a new initiative in January 2008 to follow up with previously audited agencies to ensure that they are actually making the needed changes identified in earlier audits.

▪ We conducted approximately 50% more performance audits during 2005-2008 than were released during 2001-2004. This increased emphasis on performance audits comes in spite of the fact that in 2005 numerous performance audit staffers were shifted to help clean up the backlog of investigative audits.

Our staff has worked hard to transform the Office of the State Auditor into a more pro-active agency that works to prevent problems rather than simply cleaning them up after the fact, and I am proud of our efforts.

In closing, please join me in congratulating Beth Wood on her election as our next State Auditor. I wish Beth well, and I hope she will continue to make the Office of the State Auditor a more pro-active agency and that she will aggressively hold politicians in both parties accountable for how they spend our tax dollars.

Thank you again for the privilege of serving as State Auditor for the past four years. It has been an honor.

Sincerely,

Leslie W. Merritt, CPA
State Auditor of North Carolina

Milwaukee to open nation's first "Gay" Middle School

2009-01-09T12:18:00.000-08:00

The intent is not assimilation. The GOP underestimates the nature of our political opposition, and moderate though some might fancy themselves, the opposition will not allow us to define the terms of the debate. They will call this freedom. We must call it segregation.

Kathleen Gilbert
LifeSiteNews

Milwaukee's Alliance School, one of the few officially "gay-friendly" high schools in the country, has been given clearance to extend their pro-homosexual curriculum to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.

The proposal went through easily last month, with the city's board of education unanimously approving it by default, as it was not pulled for further discussion or a vote. Tina Owen, Lead Teacher of Alliance, said they would be accepting applications from middle-school-age children for the 2009-10 school year immediately.

Marty Lexmond, the director of school innovation for Milwaukee Public Schools, told U.S. News and World Report that such an institution was needed to help adolescents, who are now increasingly publicly identifying their sexual orientation as early as middle school.

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute was dismayed that the motion went through with no discernable opposition.

"I'm stunned that the religious leaders, the Christian pastors in Milwaukee, did not rise up in righteous indignation against this school," lamented Higgins. "That is what I find perhaps equally [as] troubling, if not more so."

"I think it's unconscionable to be affirming this in public schools," said Higgins. "This is not an issue for public schools. And kids at 11- and 12- and 13- and 14-[years of age] are confused on many issues - sexuality [being] one of them."

Regina Griggs, executive director of the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), agreed.

"To affirm an 11-year-old? Please," said Griggs. "They haven't even gone through puberty, but they know that they want to have sex with other men and women? I'm sorry, but it's ridiculous."

The original Alliance high school opened four years ago, also with little opposition. Other similar plans across the country, however, have not had it as easy as the Milwaukee school.

In Chicago, plans for a "gay-friendly" high school were recently delayed due to concerns from both sides of the debate, as some feared that the plans amounted to segregating homosexuals. And when Manhattan's Harvey Milk High School opened in 2003, named for an openly homosexual politician of the 1970s, students met with protesters outside the school's doors.

Why Pat McCrory isn't seeking another term...

2009-01-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

Shambles?

2009-01-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

Mark Binker is a great reporter for the Greensboro News-Record. He reports the following on his Capital Beat blog:

One prominent North Carolina Republican told me this week "the party is in shambles," referring both to its national standing and its operations in state. Rebuilding it will fall to the next chairman.

Now I don't think the party is in shambles and whoever said that needs to think twice. This last election was my first as an involved volunteer, after spending time working for the state courts and later as a journalist, and I saw a lot of dedicated people working hard.

I think saying their efforts resulted in "shambles" is a bit extreme. There is a lot of work to do and we need to get down to it and skip the wallowing.

Reinventing conservatism, one tweet at a time

2009-01-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

Reading The Corner on NRO you see trends.

Facing Internal Exile many of us are floundering, pondering whether the Party is worth the trouble, questioning if BO is really a clear and present danger and then remarking, after the "debate" of RNC Chair candidates, Monday (moderated by Mullah Norquist) "that's just sad."

You, also, may be less than cheered by the consultants, determined (naturally, and as always) to "separate policy from tactics." Meanwhile, the Democrats are preparing to dissolve the electorate, fulfilling a long-held dream to make a majority of voters dependent for their supper on the Federal Government. Republicans have helped this long-term effort, stupidly perhaps, but well-enough that the new President's "refundable tax credits" may very well be the Straw that breaks the Camel's Back.

Which begs the circular question: Is it too late for the Republican Party? Is it worth the trouble?

Heartening is the sudden emergence, from a pack of wannabe, self-actualized Web 2.0 "movements" of RebuildTheParty.com

I joined trustingly, as if I was disarming a road-side IED, in Bagdhad's Green Zone.

No one in Silicon Valley is more determined to build "the next killer app" than are Republicans ready, perhaps (finally), to heed good advice our leaders should have understood when first printed in the NRODT ("National Review on Dead Trees") after the 1994 Revolution.

That advice was "abandon all illusion of media sympathy" and "build your own lines of communication."

First, Jim Manzi, one of The Chosen-Citizen Contributors to the casual Corner, who had the following brief posting there Monday. He pointed to a column on Ars Technica recommending, among other advice, Rebuild the Party as worth watching (and Joining, TODAY).

Technology and Winning Elections [Jim Manzi]

If you care about the relationship between new technologies and political success for the Right, this post by Julian Sanchez strikes me as well worth your time. So do the RedState and NextRight posts to which he links. - 01/05 12:56 PM

From the recommended Ars Technica Article by Julian Sanchez:

"The most prominent of the restructuring efforts, though, is Rebuild the Party, brainchild of a group of Republican online strategists who are pushing the idea that adapting to the Internet must be the GOP's top priority over the next four years. They're proposing an ambitious goal of recruiting 5 million new online activists and insisting on a new openness that better integrates distributed grassroots efforts."

Nothing to Lose

2008-11-14T11:09:00.000-08:00

With very little more than one week left in his term of office, I am still among the thirty percent of voters who trust President George W. Bush.

I can speak only for myself. We are a nation of individuals, and for myself I can only say my support has been nearly “Good to the Last Drop.”

This trust began to waver, finally, only during these past months,.

As hated as Richard Nixon was by the Left before 1969 The Washington Post's legendary political cartoonist Herbert Block, famous since 1952 for highlighting the new president’s “Five O’clock shadow” before Inaugural Day that year drew an empty barber’s chair with a note attached that read, “the proprietor gladly offers every new President a clean shave.”

So it is with Barack Obama, who could not support last November because of his honesty, oddly enough, his clearly stated intention to swell the federal government further into the lives of every American. It was easy for me to vote for John McCain though I was denied a choice in his nomination because I live in North Carolina- because Senator McCain said he supported policies that would make Washington less of the parasite that it has become.

I now admit John McCain spoke less honestly about his intentions than Barack Obama. I have to admit, Barack Obama was honest during the campaign about his belief in a greater role for Washington in our lives. So his honesty cost him my vote.

As often as President Bush spoke of reducing government, the result was different.

Both the Hard Left and Soft Statists have had their candidates, but, as it turns out, Conservatives have really had no one to support for president since 1984, the first year I voted for a Republican president. This year the True Believer-Leftist had an honest candidate, one unashamed to be perceived as a Crypto-Socialist, perhaps for the first such nominee of one of the competitive political Partys in American history. Whether this honesty about his political philosophy aided his victory we can't yet tell.

Nevertheless, The rise of Barack Obama to the presidency has the folks in my community very apprehensive, perhaps more than is proper, I will allow. Personally, I am very apprehensive about the beginning his presidency for some starkly simple reasons that are very easy to understand.

Going into a recession that was a direct result of a spike in gasoline prices and an earlier outright refusal by Congress (both Democrat and Republican) to reign in federally-subsidized mortgage lending has been met with insanity, disturbingly encouraged by President Bush. After at least three strong warnings, in the end he decided to help the Democrat Majority in Congress in co-signing a $700 Billion “bailout” of a home lending industry made cash poor by federal policy; a bailout paid by a promise of future performance of the American Economy and we the taxpayers.

Lately, frozen in my mind, is that astounding remembrance of President Bush standing in the Rose Garden telling us that Republican efforts to block this stunning and deliberate weakening of the American economy (with the Treasury Secretary as an Unchallengeable Trustee) would mean the end of the world.

With mere weeks left in his term of office, it meant my trust in the character of George W. Bush was finally really shaken to the core. I’m still stunned by that event, which has also become the grandest possible set-up for the practicing socialist elected president in November. Barack Obama begins his own presidency with the opportunity presented this “crisis.”

Those in Congress who most effectively and stubbornly defended this interference, in a market dominated by the very government institutions that created this crisis, institutions who also organized to buy their congressional defenders off with personal and campaign briberies, are not just at-large but are free roam about and to blame the situation on an “unregulated free market” in banking that simply does not exist.

And they will apparently continue to very gleefully use the "opportunity" presented by the crisis to further choke the life out American enterprise and socialize our society.

(Thanks a lot, George.)

Republicans are still chatting among themselves about what their proper role should be, though, regardless of what they say or do, the Democrats in charge of Congress will find a way to phrase every shortcoming as the fault of Republicans.

While Republicans chat, and lick their wounds, they evade a clear responsibility to oppose and hold the present Majority accountable for what might become a permanent harm to a free society and people. Those who know socialist policies must fail are mistaken and irresponsible in deciding to wait for failure because the Democrats will continue to make certain Republicans share or even carry the entire blame for whatever goes wrong, and whenever it goes wrong.

I’m enough of a past-supporter of President Bush to wonder if there was or is something unseen going on, when he encouraged what he had to know is very likely to become "Trillion Dollar federal deficits for year to come," paid for by the sweat of hard working taxpayers, year after year ahead.

Because we have endured and thrived after recessions, without any effort to make them permanent, the reaction by our supposed Conservative president to this situation has had me wondering if there were not some massive Black Budget defense project underway, perhaps a need for hundreds of billions to build a defense against a pending invasion by Martians.

I’m still wondering, because something does not add up.

The very past performance of government policy that actually works in stimulating free economic activity, and thus the precise thing Barack Obama asked to hear about few days ago, is so obvious that Obama have to ask for such a suggestion had me looking around each corner half expecting Rod Serling to pop up, second-hand smoke and all, to announce our arrival at “The Twilight Zone.”

President Kennedy knew what would work back in 1961 and President Reagan spoke honestly and implemented what should be done back in 1981. George W. Bush, back in 2001, (the original President Bush) knew what the answer was to the President-elect's question also. It's not a Democrat or a Republican answer, it's a proven, objective reality.

The answer to President-elect Obama’s apparently honest search for a "better solution" is across the board tax cuts, plain and simple.

Given the percentage of our national wealth consumed by government, it is the only policy known to work. The answer is to take the federal government’s heel off the neck of what is supposed to be a free people engaged in honest enterprise.

If anyone needs a bailout it is the American people themselves, and such a bailout would not require the printing Trillions of inflationary dollars. It would cost the government nothing except a little power the Constitution says it probably should not have.

Why do we continue hearing, day after day, of a “hope” that Trillion Dollar deficits, for years to come, will stimulate the economy?

I entertain no such hope. Instead, I am apprehensive because such a course must make the situation far worse, and it also makes the intentions of the Democrat Majority in Washington suspect.

The only shortcoming from a lower tax policy, one favoring less punishment and more reward for real job creation has always been to reign in Congress from spending the surplus tax revenue, the real money that always pours into government from taxes on activities that would otherwise not occur.

Why guess about what works, and why ignore tax policy that is known to work every single time, often even in time of war?

Democrats who know history, recent history, also know tax cuts work. Therefore I can’t help wondering why Americans tolerate their determination to cause an incredible new expansion of the same government activities that caused this present recession.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House who know these things and still advocate a expansion of government, I have to conclude, must have something else in mind, and something that requires nothing less than a crippling of our freedoms to engage in business and to improve our lives by our own labor, making a majority of voters dependent on “a prior claim on the charity of their neighbors” policed by government, also.

Whether this stubborn hope of government parasites comes from a real ignorance, a deliberate ignorance, or deceit makes little difference. The result must be the same. For all the excitement many Americans obviously have about the future of the nation with Barack Obama in the White House, the recent trong support of George W. Bush for similar policies scares the crap out of me.

Ours is the greatest nation on Earth, but anyone with a vested interest in keeping American civilization great should also be apprehensive.

If we want to keep America great, the time has arrived for us to ignore the Amen Corner and the bleating herd blindly following a manufactured conventional wisdom. And if Barack Obama is truly honest when asking for policy suggestions history has proved will work (and he wants to be re-elected) then he will hear if Republicans speak loudly against more impending take overs of the management of our lives - by the same folks who run the Post Office.

Then again, if he is dishonest in asking such for those suggestions, then everyone can all learn now how he really feels about individual freedom.

There is nothing to lose.

For the moment, you still have a Republic, “if you can keep it.”