WataugaWatch

Apparently they couldn't get Michelle Bachmann nor Sarah Palin, so Tom Fetzer and the NCGOP will use under-informed and under-performing poor Doug Hoffman, fresh off his loss in the NY-23, as the headliner for a Raleigh fundraiser (Hall of Fame Dinner on November 21). Oh goody.

What were we predicting a couple of days ago about Hoffman's becoming the new face of the GOP?

ADDENDUM
Tom Jensen, reacting to this news over at Public Policy Polling, sez, don't underestimate the North Carolina Republican Party's ability to defeat themselves in an environment that might otherwise conventionally favor their electoral chances:

If the Hoffman model is what [Fetzer & Co.] want to emulate they may just find a way to screw it up in a political climate that appears to be very favorable for them. Democrats have kept power in recent years despite one corruption scandal after another because voters in North Carolina think the Republicans are just too extreme and incompetent. You'd think they'd try to learn from those lessons and put a different face forward that could actually appeal to voters in the center but I may have overestimated them.

Labels: North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer, Tom Jensen

"Under the Dome" allowed NC GOP Chair Tom Fetzer to go on about how Tuesday's elections are good omens for North Carolina Republicans without bothering to ask him how he explained the virtual sweep of municipal elections by not only Democrats but by progressive Democrats and what that might portend for next year's races.

It's like Fetzer is chair of the Virginia Republican Party, since looking north for inspiration was all he wanted to do. Understandable, since North Carolina cities (except for Greensboro) turned down Republicans flat in Tuesday's elections. Hell, we hear that even North Wilkesboro went progressive.

We don't know enough about Greensboro politics to understand what went down there, but it was bad for Democratic incumbents. For what it's worth, you can read the Republican interpretation of the meaning of that city election here ... by a Greensboro blogger.

Labels: Greensboro, Tom Fetzer

Meet Doug Hoffman, losing candidate for the U.S. Congress in the NY-23. Hoffman did NOT run and lose as a Republican. He ran and lost as a tea-bagging conservative. The GOP did NOT initially pick Hoffman as its candidate. No, it was worse than that. It picked a "moderate" Republican woman, Dede Scozzafava, who does not hate gay marriage and is pro-choice on abortion rights. Which led (as we're sure you know) to a major uprising within Republican and tea-bagger ranks. Ended up that every major Republican presidential hopeful in 2012, along with many other prominent national Republican spokespeople, bailed on Scozzafava and started endorsing Mr. Creepy Man Hoffman. Got so bad that Scozzafava pulled out of the race and endorsed the Democrat, the Unknown Man, Bill Owens, who won last night ... the first Democrat to be elected from the NY-23 since before the Civil War. Put that in your tea bag and steep it!

If this is what the conservative movement brings to the Republican Party, GOP operatives have very little to be strutting about this a.m. Exit polling in both Virginia and New Jersey strongly suggest that the voters in those states were not lashing out at President Obama. They were lashing out at Corzine in New Jersey (good riddance to all such present and former Goldman Sachs bankers, sez I). In Virginia, the 2008 Obama voters stayed home and demonstrated that Virginia definitely ain't for lovers. It's for old people.

Certainly, in North Carolina Tom Fetzer and the state GOP have precious little to crow about (from what we've been able to see so far this a.m.). But more on that in a subsequent post.

The elections in New Jersey and Virginia WERE about Obama in one way: those states went for him a year ago because he promised change, he promised an up-ending of "business as usual," he promised visionary leadership and progressive ideals. He has not delivered. He surrounded himself with the wrong people, and instead of dynamic leadership, we've gotten maddening caution and Rahm Emanuel. I might have sat at home myself in New Jersey or Virginia yesterday.

We keep hoping that the other Barack Obama, the one who won that huge election a year ago and told us things were going to be different, is eventually going to actually inhabit the Oval Office.

If he doesn't, 2010 will indeed be awful.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Owens, National Republican Party, Rahm Emanuel, Republican "brand", teabag protest, Tom Fetzer

Photos of Boone mover-and-shaker Franklin Graham, posing with new NCGOP Chair Tom Fetzer and Franklin's father Billy Graham, were used by Fetzer at the Republican State Convention on Saturday to convey the unmistakable impression that he was endorsed by the Graham family.

Labels: Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Tom Fetzer

It's Tom Fetzer for chair of the Republican Party of North Carolina.

According to Katy's Conservative Corner:

Party unity has been achieved. A big relief has filled the room and your blogger is especially happy. Not necessarily at the outcome, though that did go in her favor, but over the fact that this long, often dirty, race is over. We've all said things we've regretted and its thankfully time to move forward and get on with the job of electing Republicans!

Then immediately noting that many of the supporters of Fetzer's chief rival, Pope Foundation minion Chad Adams, were taking their defeat hard:

Sadly, many Adams delegates are filing out.

Perhaps they weren't quite as sad for saying things they regretted. We dunno.

Labels: Katy's Conservative Corner, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

Former Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer and current candidate to take over the NC GOP (who is, incidentally, still not gay) decided to prove to delegates to the Republican state convention next weekend that he can produce attack ads better'n any other candidate up for chair of the state party.

He's got the formula down: ignore current real problems and go the Republicans-are-morally-superior route.

Labels: North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

Definitely.

Legal precedent, not on his side: "The N.C. Court of Appeals ruled in 1994 that falsely claiming someone is gay or bisexual is not libelous on its face."

Labels: homophobia, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

Jeff A. Taylor over at The Meck Deck, another of the 4 million websites sponsored by the right-wing John Locke Foundation, sums up his reaction to the Tom Fetzer "I'm NOT Gay" side-show in the N.C. Republican Party: "...this dust-up tells me that there is a sickness deep within the Republican Party in North Carolina that will not soon be healed. What was once a party of ideas is now a collection of special interests, boiling resentments, and stunning mediocrity."

We're going to remember that particular oxymoron ... "stunning mediocrity." Nice touch, that.

Labels: homophobia, John Locke Foundation, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

It's not just the Watauga County Republican Party that's obsessed with homosexuality. The state party is too. Where else would an e-mailed gay accusation about front-runner to become the new state Republican Party Chair, Tom Fetzer, elicit this hilariously defensive denial from Fetzer:

"I am not gay -- never have been -- never will be. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support any of the scurrilous allegations made in the anonymous attack on me .... The fact that I'm 54 and single does not mean that I have to put up with vicious rumors that I'm gay. The fact that I am heterosexual is a matter of public record."

Excuse me? How did Mr. Fetzer establish his heterosexuality as "a matter of public record"? Is there a central office for doing that? A board of examination? Is there videotape evidence of his rampant heterosexuality in action?

What is even funnier is that Fetzer is also a political consultant (he was big in this state for Elizabeth Dole's reelection), and he's done what I should think a political consultant might have advised him against ... giving credence to the accusation in the way he denies it ("The fact that I'm 54 and single...") -- not to mention letting the whole world in on what was probably just an e-mail kerfluffle among a few Republican wing-nuts.

Such is the paranoia (queer fear) in the modern North Carolina Republican Party.

Labels: homophobia, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer

Delegates to the state Republican Party convention in May will elect a new leader for their party.

ConservativeNC.com has endorsed a Locke Foundation apparatchik for the job.

But we would expect that this guy has greater name recognition, bigger political connections, and hence the inside track.

Labels: Chad Adams, North Carolina Republican Party, Tom Fetzer