NC Republican Primary: Thoughts

Going race by race, I now analyze the results from the 2008 North Carolina Republican Primaries of interest:

U.S. Congress, District 4

It will be very difficult for me to give an uncolored analysis of this race, being that I work for B.J. Lawson. In any event, this was a very exciting outcome. It is a demonstration of what a intelligent, well-spoken candidate who runs a positive campaign with a strong message of individual liberty and committed and impassioned volunteers can do in the Republican Party. The who's who of the power base in the District 4 GOP were campaigning hard and very against B.J., putting out negative mailers, t.v. ads, emails, and phone calls to GOP activists and voters. Clearly, it was not enough, as B.J. defeated Augustus Cho (whose entire campaign was deeply negative and unsubstantive) by a count of 71% to 29%. It received massive praise on the blog of The American Conservative magazine, and Dave Weigel at Reason Magazine's Hit and Run blog has made numerous postings on it over the last few days. (This, in addition to the mentions on other libertarian-oriented blogs.)

This has already had repercussions for the local GOP. Durham County GOP Melodie Parrish, who actively supported Cho and worked for his campaign, resigned from her position essentially in protest of the victory. Martha Jenkins, the District 4 GOP Chair who also actively supported Cho and worked for the campaign, is getting requests for her resignation. Obviously, this campaign has torched Cho's career with the Party, as his effectiveness is certainly questionable and has had his reputation damaged by his failure to answer basic questions.

We have not seen the end of the fallout of this Primary. This victory represents an important milestone in the quest of liberty-minded Republicans to take back the Party, Congress, and the Presidency. With a party stacked completely against him, B.J. won with flying colors. He has provided a proven blueprint for other candidates around the country to follow in winning GOP nominations. This is a very important first step. It will be quite hard for us to defeat David Price in November, but with proper funding and a maintenance of the energy I saw on the ground, it is doable in a year when voters around the country want change.

U.S. Congress, 3rd District

Representative Walter Jones defeated Onslow County Commissioner Joe McGlaughlin by a healthy margin, 59% to 41%. This is a very welcome outcome. Representative Jones isn't perfect along libertarian lines, but he is a good and honest man and is a strong ally for anti-Iraq War Republicans. A primary loss for Jones would have been an absolute tragedy for this movement and for Washington.

North Carolina Governor

Pat McCrory took the Republican Nomination by a healthy margin, 46% to 37% over Fred Smith, the closest challenger. Liberty Republicans-endorsed candidate, former NC Supremre Court and State Court of Appeals Justice Bob Orr, unfortunately did not fare as well as other endorsed candidates, garnering 7% of the vote. Justice Orr is the best candidate for NC Governor I have seen in my lifetime (the Winston Salem Journal agreed) and would have made a fabulous governor. He is brilliant and intellectually interested, and he won me over with his principled stance against the corporate weflare/recruitment incentives policy of the state, which he correctly justified on Constitutional and free market grounds. But alas he was just too honest and principled of a player for the power brokers of the Party to back. I have been told by a friend in the campaign that this will be Bob's last run for office, which I hope is not at all true.

I have mixed feelings about Pat McCrory. On the one hand, I do believe he can be an effective executive; he was such as the Mayor of Charlotte. I definitely don't think he is either a libertarian or a limited government conservative. However, I would easily have taken him over Fred Smith, who is the epitome of a corporate puppet, authoritarian, social reactionary and no friend to liberty-minded Republicans. (In addition to being thoroughly unimpressive intellectually, an impression I personally garnered after an interaction with him.)

North Carolina Lt. Governor

Bob Pittenger cruised to an easy victory, winning 59% of the vote. Liberty Republicans-endorsed Greg Dority won 10%, finishing last. However, he and the rest of the candidates were running as huge longshots. Pittenger was the establishment's choice from the get-go. This is highly unfortunate, as he is both a douchebag and an ignoramus. I saw him when he came to speak to the UNC College Republicans a few months ago. After making a snide comment to me when I came in late, I was obviously turned off by him on a personal level from the beginning. However, he made a comment that is simply unforgivably stupid for any public official to make. I shit you not, he said this in his speech, word for word:

"I don't know how George Bush could have funded his war without cutting taxes."

Umm.... Bob, have you ever heard of borrowing? He then had the audacity (or perhaps ignorance, which would be quite believable) to identify the aforementioned policy as "fiscally conservative."

I have no idea what I will do in November in this race. I do know what I absolutely will not do, and that is vote for Bob Pittenger. I don't care how libertarian/conservative he may be (I don't think he is in the slightest either); as a voter and North Carolina citizen, I simply cannot reward this kind of incompetence with my vote. And I don't see how it advances the cause of the Republican Party in any state, let alone North Carolina, to be running candidates who are dumber than Dan Quayle.

North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction

Richard Morgan won the nomination easily, with 51% of the vote. Liberty Republicans-endorsed (at least before election night, when I found out something I didn't know before announcing the endorsement) Eric Smith finished in second, receiving 25% of the vote. Morgan has ruffled the feathers of many Republicans in the state, after his power-sharing deal with the Democrats earlier this decade when the North Carolina House of Representatives was split. I'm not sure what I'm going to do in this race in November.