Mike Munger

Via email from Americans for Prosperity:

RALEIGH – With tax bills on the minds of millions of North Carolina taxpayers, five of North Carolina’s gubernatorial candidates have signed a pledge to support spending restraint, the grassroots free-market group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) announced today. Candidates Bill Graham, Pat McCrory, Michael Munger, Bob Orr, and Fred Smith have pledged to support a constitutional limit on state spending known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR).

“The Democrats in North Carolina are what the Republicans usually are, and the Republicans are the Taliban,” Munger said, with characteristic brashness. “They look to scripture to decide what their positions should be.”

In a wide-ranging interview with the Winston-Salem Journal, Mike Munger, Libertarian candidate for governor in North Carolina, does what almost no politician ever does: he calls it exactly like he sees it. And while I don't agree with much of what the good professor has to say, I sure do love the way he says it.

From today's News and Observer:

On Perdue:

"Bev Perdue seems to be running largely on a platform that it's her turn.

"She's an automaton. It's like a Stepford wife. She has no issues.

"She's running commercials that mostly seem to establish that she was once a child. She was once younger, and that at some points in her life, she's had some unfortunate haircuts.

On Richard Moore:

"A lot of the money Richard Moore is getting is from Wall Street, firms that are making contributions based on the dealings Richard Moore had in releasing bonds ... as state treasurer with those same Wall Street firms.

Up until yesterday we were batting zero for five among gubernatorial candidates getting the right answer on what to do about the community college issue around illegal immigration. Here's where things stand.

Over the past three days, an extremist Republican wedge appears to have been driven into the heart and soul of the Old North State. In response to the (gasp) horror of allowing children of illegal immigrants to attend community colleges in North Carolina, we have witnessed a stunning level of political expediency among five of the six people who consider themselves worthy of holding our state's highest elected office - plus the one already holding it.

The debacle started predictably enough with the two richest Republican candidates, Fred Smith and Bill Graham. Smith has made his fortunes on the backs of working class people who have shoveled his dirt and poured his concrete with no need for education whatsoever. Graham's future is even more tightly tied to sustaining ignorance among a permanent underclass that will buy his never-ending stream of anti-government rhetoric. There's no surprise with these two, none at all.

Then Bob Orr joined the party, quickly followed by Richard Moore, and this morning by Beverly Perdue. Along the way, Governor Mike Easley himself joined the debate, sort of, saying he wouldn't comment on the policy.