ncgop

Patrick McHenry, dissuaded with the fact that he can't come up with anything to beat back recent photos made public by Mike Rogers/Brandon Greeson, has now taken his time to begin inventing letters and insinuating that Cass Ballenger, his predecessor, is senile (though he voted for McHenry).

The story starts when suddenly, out of the blue, the former Congressman decided to endorse Lance Sigmon over Patrick McHenry. In the Republican camp, that's known as "suicide", partially because Patrick McHenry will sic every single person he can on you- and that's exactly what he did. Seeing the signed/dated letter, McHenry claimed it was fake (and insinuated it was forged)... until Ballenger heard about it and made a Phone Advertisement for Sigmon (Recording in the YouTube video). Wuh oh. So what does McHenry do? Falsify his own letters!

This morning I delivered a petition to Senator Elizabeth Dole's Raleigh office. It was signed by 1,265 concerned citizens -- including more than 300 North Carolinians -- all requesting that Senator Elizabeth Dole use her considerable clout in her party to tell the North Carolina Republican Party's Linda Daves to stop running the race-baiting anti-Obama ad called "Extreme."

The bottom-feeding ad is currently running on four TV stations in the state (New Bern, Asheville, Winston-Salem and Wilmington). It attempts to draw a tenuous-at-best connection between Dem gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore (both endorsed Obama) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It's crude and reflects the pathetic state of the GOP here, a party in embarrassing decline, longing for the days where everyone knew their place.

The reason Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, the crew at BlueNC and I wanted to do this is because John McCain doesn't have the cojones to go toe-to-toe with the apparently omnipotent Linda Daves. He denounced the ad from afar but couldn't even pick up the phone to express his dismay directly.

We figured that perhaps Elizabeth Dole, with all her party connections here, would have the gravitas necessary to take on the likes of Linda Daves. Surely she must care that fossilized Republican party in North Carolina is running racist dog whistle ads is not what he approves of. Unfortunately, her initial response wasn't very encouraging.

"I am concentrating on getting my work done here in the Senate, and I'm just not going to get into refereeing a third party political ad that has nothing to do with my race," she said.

So that's where the petition effort came in.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright said some horrible things about America. He is evil. Forget about the good he has done in his life. He is evil. I saw it on CNN.

In the wake of Linda Daves starting up the right-wing sleaze machine here in North Carolina, many have observed that the ugly ghost of Jesse Helms is alive and well in the Old North State. Which got me to thinking about what the North Carolina GOP has actually done of value in service to the people of North Carolina.

I'd really love to hear your ideas, because try as I might, I can come up with exactly nothing.

Between Floyd Brown and the NCGOP, we have clear view of what Obama faces in November ...

Max Borders at Red Clay Citizen would have you believe that resources never run out and that Bush has made improvements in cost-benefit analysis.

According to Thunder Pig, John Armor and Fred Smith won the Macon County GOP straw poll.

Cold Fury openly celebrates the possiblity of increased violence against gay and bi-sexual teenagers.

Michael Munger converts Mike Gravel

NCGOP chair Linda Daves sent Jerry (NCDP chair) some sunscreen and this nice note.

They're doing some publicity stunts for sunshine week. More info to come.

Art Pope didn't send us nothing . . .

Civitas has a luncheon every month or so to spin the results of their push polls. These meetings are primarily used to offer advice to Republican elected officials and GOP campaign workers on how to win elections. Given that Civitas claims a 501(c)3 tax free status, this ought to be illegal, but who honestly expects the GOP to play by the same rules as the rest of us?

Several of the statements made, particularly by Fetzer, are shocking in their cold ruthlessness. I think it is telling that nobody objected on principle to some of his ideas.

I think this is the best example:

Fetzer: This isn't like what we did with Reagan. Since we don't have anti-communism to unite the Republican party anymore we'll have to find new issues to agitate our political base.

An audience member then suggested, why don't we just replace fear of communism with fear of terrorism?

Fetzer: Yes, that's the plan.

How do you spell rightwing? "Right-wing," "Rightwing," or "Right Wing?" I tend to want to conjoin my words...