Coverage here at Daily Kos and at BlueNC of our own little Karl Rove has stirred up a hornets nest on the internets here in North Carolina. This is my continuing beat of the drum.
I was raised in a Southern Baptist household and spent the first 17 years of my life with parents who called black people niggers. We were right-wing Republicans through and through, who steered clear of debt like we steered clear of Commies like we steered clear of Satan. We were so conservative that when I left home to be sworn into the US Naval Academy, it was like stepping into a parallel universe of liberalism. For all its faults, the Academy taught me to think critically about god, the military, war and freedom. By the time I became an officer in the middle of the Vietnam debacle, I was thoroughly radicalized. I had turned completely Blue.
I am still Blue today, but that color has little to do with being a registered Democrat. Especially here in North Carolina, where I find I have little in common with much of the state's Democratic party establishment. But I am also a pragmatist. For better or for worse, we're in a two-party state and our choices are limited to two different colors of graft and self-interest. The only other choice - to opt out of politics as so many have done - is unthinkable.
Why? Because no matter how terrible the options, there is always the lesser of two evils. And in North Carolina the Republican party, as personified by people like Art Pope, is twenty times more destructive and dangerous than the worst Democrats could ever be.
Just imagine for a moment what North Carolina could look like if we had George Bush and Karl Rove running the show around here. Imagine the damage to our environment that would be wrought. Imagine the privatization schemes - the selling of public lands, the commercialization of public schools, the outsourcing of institutions - that would be decreed. Imagine the new policies we'd see - the marginalizing of gays, the shredding of the safety net, the right-wing takeover of university curricula, the assaults on choice and reproductive rights. Imagine the incompetence in governing that comes with people who rejoice in destroying common ground, in pitting neighbor against neighbor.
This is why I fight. Because if Art Pope has his way, the state of North Carolina will be remade in his own image. He has already bought a few seats in the state legislature, just the springboard he needs to make sure everything else is for sale to the highest bidder. Using Karl Rove's playbook, Art Pope is forcing centrist Republicans to the extremes, with no one willing to cross him for fear of the corporate money he'll spend to support their opponents.
North Carolina deserves better than this. North Carolina deserves a state legislature that is free from the taint of the corporate money of the man who would be king.