North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has really lost his grip on reality and nowhere is it more evident than in the New York Times' latest story: "North Carolina Restroom Law Becomes a Central Election Issue."
It opens with 79-year-old Parrish Clodfelter, who clearly has no interest in equal treatment for transgender people, but ...
If the backlash continues, Mr. Clodfelter said, he will consider voting for Mr. McCrory’s Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, who supports the law’s repeal.
“I’m afraid if they don’t change it,” he said, “it’ll hurt the state.”
When you're losing the Clodfelter's of the state based on your hate bill, you're in for some big trouble, which is exactly what PPP's latest survey found. Not only do 45 percent of voters oppose the anti-LGBT law, HB2, while only 36 percent support it, a majority of voters believe the law is hurting the state.
Just 32% of voters in the state think HB2 is actually helping North Carolina, compared to 53% who think it's hurting the state.
The piece also points out, as we have noted before, that HB2 is hurting McCrory's polling numbers:
An Elon University poll conducted from April 10 to 15 showed Mr. Cooper, the state’s longtime attorney general, leading Mr. McCrory 48 percent to 42 percent among registered voters. It was Mr. Cooper’s largest lead in the five polls that Elon has conducted in the last year. (emphasis added)
McCrory ran in 2012 as a self-styled pro-business moderate and his re-election bid depends on wooing both moderates and some crossover liberals—2012 exit polls showed him getting support of 49 percent and 19 percent of the two groups, respectively.
But now the bill he signed into law—that essentially received zero debate and he now admits was flawed—has hijacked the election.
Mr. McCrory, 59, last week could barely contain his irritation that the law had taken center stage in the election, siphoning attention from his central message: that he has been a wise steward of the economy who had engineered what he and his team have branded the “Carolina Comeback.”
In a mind-bending state of denial about his role in the debacle, McCrory overtly tried to pin the mess on Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts yesterday. But in Monday's NYT story, he really went off the rails, explaining that Charlotte's ordinance was a collusion specifically designed to upset the governor's race.
On Thursday, he said he suspected that the entire matter had been orchestrated by Democrats and the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, to give Democrats an advantage in a tight governor’s race. [...] Mr. McCrory used the word “Orwellian” twice.
“You’ve got to be politically naïve if you think this is not coordinated by a very effective — a very effective — group,” he said.
Oh, man, we’re talking la-la land, folks. Whenever you use the word "Orwellian" as a backdrop for your reality, something has gone awry. The Human Rights Campaign is simply not capable of this type of strategic thinking—it's been getting its tuchus handed to it for the past two years in the form of "religious freedom" laws and "bathroom bills" and yet still hasn't come up with a proactive strategy for passing the federal LGBTQ Equality Act.
Bottom line: it’s high time McCrory took a look in the mirror, lest he keep embarrassing himself with “Orwellian” delusions.