Triad Conservative

How Many Will Oppose Tillis in the GOP Primary?

A post by Carter Wrenn, who is working for Garland Tucker, discusses some polling results that ordinarily would indicate Thom Tillis is highly vulnerable in the GOP primary next year. (HT: JH)

And Tillis ought to be vulnerable. He has done absolutely nothing of value since arriving in Washington four years ago except voting to confirm judges Trump has nominated. Otherwise, nothing... nada.

Of course, he was quick to ingratiate himself with Mitch McConnell as soon as he got there. In fact, it is reasonable to assume he brown-nosed McConnnell even before he arrived in D.C.

And remain mindful that McConnell has actively stymied the presidency of Donald Trump by controlling which administration nominees will be confirmed; by helping instigate the Mueller investigation; and by assuring Trump's favored legislation will not pass. Tillis is part of that crowd, and part of that mindset.

So who will oppose Tillis in the GOP primary?

1. We have previously discussed Garland Tucker who is likely more conservative than Tillis; but who still has a content-free website;
2. The Club for Growth is apparently urging Mark Walker to run, but Walker has an issue that might hinder him in a statewide campaign, about which the Daily Haymaker has written. Walker would otherwise be at least somewhat of an improvement over Tillis;
3. I received a mail piece from a lady in eastern North Carolina named Sandy Smith who says she is running. Her website policy positions are more substantial than those found on Tucker's website, although she mentions "comprehensive immigration reform" which is often code for amnesty. It is quite expensive to do general mailings statewide, so Ms. Smith apparently has some money at her disposal.

Of course, there may be others that become apparent over the next several months.

As more candidates throw their respective hats in the ring, they will split the anti-Tillis vote. In fact, that is one of the GOP establishment's key strategies to protect incumbents. Tillis becomes more likely to survive the primary as additional candidates run. We already have at least two running against Tillis. Neither Tucker nor Smith have a solid, deep base of support; but Tucker's candidacy is attracting some level of interest.

Running statewide is very challenging. It obviously helps to have money as well as name recognition. The establishment GOP fights conservatives with much more ferocity than it fights the left.

There is one other issue, however. The GOP primary electorate itself is not uniformly conservative. It has many moderates... and some liberals... and a fair number who align mostly with the establishment GOP. 

Will any of Tillis' challengers be able to run the gauntlet? This will be interesting to watch.

American Evil

Anthony Esolen, Touchstone:

While the nation includes many citizens seeking justice and doing good, in its legislation and court rulings, we discern what can only be called great evil deliberately committed by the state. Our nation's evil still may be masked at times by good deeds and by the residue of what the nation once was and is no longer...

In the matters of abortion, protecting the innocence of children, the very definition of marriage, and those laws and customs that promote and protect the natural family, Christians have on their side not only the word of God, but ordinary biology, anthropology readily observable by people of ordinary intelligence and no advanced education, logic, moral axioms common to every human civilization, and the thought of men of letters of the West for more than two thousand years.

This rich deposit of truth and wisdom all seems to count for nothing. You cannot use reason to defeat people who deny what reason is. You cannot remind people of the wisdom of the past when they neither know the past nor care to know. You cannot cite authority when your opponent's principle is that of the serpent: "You shall be as gods." You cannot appeal to nature to reach the soul of someone committed to perversion. You cannot show the beauty of male and female to people of ressentiment who desire that the family should sicken and die...

Church bells toll believers to prayer, but devils to the gnashing of teeth—and stratagems and spoils. Devils are loose in the land. I am not speaking about bad people, whereof we will always have plenty. My sins are enough to trouble me till my death. I am speaking about the real item, devils, and their malign possession of a nation's soul...

Should we in the United States be so characterized? What affection we may have for democracy is severely tested by an ideology of radical egalitarian individualism. This ideology sacrifices duty to will, excellence to mediocrity, and a complex order to a simplistic egalitarianism that masks a staggering inequality between the state and every other association of a once free people.

That ideology has made the word hierarchy a slur, even while the people submit supinely to the most arrogant and meddlesome laws reaching into every feature of what once was the liberty of ordinary people in the ordinary duties of life.

It has made patriarchy a slur, even while millions of children grow up without fathers in the home, too many churches are staffed by feminists and sodomites, and innumerable boys grow up without the slightest direction or encouragement or even sympathy on their wayward journey to manhood, if they should manage to embark upon the journey at all.

It promises that we shall all be the gods of our personal and fantastical universes, meaning that we shall all be as ants in an anthill, grains of sand in a desert, atoms in a chaos.

This ideology, or idolatry, of individualistic, egalitarian "democracy" has given us now the worst of all worlds: puritanism without purity; censoriousness built upon evil standards, or delusional standards, or no standards at all; a First Commandment against making judgments that imply inequalities; and the coarsening and slow demise of high culture, with no vital folk culture to bring a new high culture to birth.

It has given us infanticide: butchering a baby alive and kicking. It has rejoiced in murdering the innocence of children. Even some churches chant happily along, Arch-High Songsters of the First Church of Ba'al...

Other than bare existence, justice is the only good left for God to grant to the self-determinedly wicked. The fire of charity is agony to them. Evidence is not far to seek. When you meet someone who celebrates the death of a baby, or who scowls and sulks to see a pure young man and woman in love, you see someone treading close to the brink of a cliff—the same over which plunged the swine, filled and maddened by a legion of devils.

My God, let it not be so for the country we still love, not yet. But if it must come, let it come swiftly. Let us pray for mercy for all persons. For nations—up to a point. But let God's justice storm as he wills.

Tucker vs.Tillis

Ben Shapiro on Jesus Christ, and Chuck Baldwin's Response

Aaron Wolf: One of His Last Pieces Was Among the Best

Aaron Wolf had been a prolific columnist and editor with Chronicles Magazine. He died one month ago, leaving behind a wife and six children.

One of his last pieces comments on the failure to pass an "infant born alive" Act in Washington. We are now in the midst of a similar failure to override Governor Cooper's veto of comparable legislation in Raleigh.

Here are Wolf's prescient observations:

The bitter irony of the failure of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act of 2019 is that pro-life Republicans brought their bill to the floor in the hope that they would highlight this monstrous incongruity, and Democrats simply stood their ground with no fear of electoral penalty because everyone, deep down, already knows exactly what is going on when an abortion occurs.

Everyone knows that abortion means killing a human being.  Those who support “abortion rights” simply justify it.  They play games with semantics because they do not wish to think about the bloody results of abortion or speak about them publicly.  They are horrified at hidden-camera videos that show Planned Parenthood selling baby livers and brains to biomedical researchers not because they have learned something new by viewing them, but because they believe it is a human right not to have to think about that which they find unpleasant.  In fact, they are perfectly content with the principle behind everything revealed in those videos: If abortions are going to occur, and the babies will be dead anyway, why should the living not benefit?...

What the War Between the States had left in place of our constitutional order has been eroded by the incorporation of the Constitution into the states.  Stripped of the context of tradition, “Due Process” and “Equal Protection” become cute, vague terms that fit whatever agenda the left wishes to push, and it remains only for the idea to occur to someone in Hollywood or at the New York Times to devise a new right that must be defended at all costs and ultimately incorporated into the laws of every state.  This modus vivendi can go only in one direction: leftward...

Big government is, quite simply, the fulfillment of the promise of liberal democracy.  We literally can’t shake it.  The illusion of self-government that accompanies any democracy causes men to develop an acute awareness of the inequalities that all people face because of unchanging human nature; and thus comes an obsession with individual rights.  This obsession grows in accordance with the size of the group of individuals—neatly organized for us by poll—against which any one individual may compare himself.  And so the consolidation of the American nation under a national government and by means of a national media culture that follows us wherever we go via ironically named smart phones causes jealousy and resentment to be ever-present hindrances in time of trouble.  Local, state, and regional identities, and those vital mediating institutions mentioned so favorably by Burke and Tocqueville, once quelled resentments and fostered duty and loyalty.  They have been neutralized.

A base as massive as ours will always tend toward baseness—unless it has a profound religious sensibility to keep it in check.  And Christianity, being the one true Faith, cannot be replaced by a mere civic religion, neopaganism, nationalism, racialism (white or nonwhite), or citizenism; God is not mocked.  Yet Christianity does not know how to operate apart from those mediating institutions which it instinctively creates and inspires: The Church must create culture, for She seeks to cultivate saints.

Conversely, the death of America’s mediating institutions—of family, school, university, neighborhood, community, local government, arts and letters—is the direct result of the Church’s failure to uphold the natural order, to cultivate virtue, to create culture.  Cultural Marxists cannot march through Christian institutions.

Today, “conservative” Church leaders seek shelter under the wings of liberal democracy, repeating the bromides of the Enlightenment, touting abstract “religious freedom” as if it were written by the finger of God on tablets of stone.  Instead of saying “Thus saith the Lord,” they apologize for the Church’s failure to defend human rights.  They speak not as prophets but as Jacobins.

Infants—whether they wait unaware of the uncertainty of their fate in the warmth of the womb of women zealous of individual rights, or whether they lie helpless on a clinic table while mothers and doctors have “meaningful discussions”—should not be bit players in political theater.  That they are tells us something about the wretchedness of our “sacred” political theories and the composition of this thing we call the American nation.

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and “conservatives”—all talk about the importance of our American democracy, and each accuses the other side of threatening it.  But what if democracy is our problem?

What if our infanticide-friendly national culture is the inevitable result of the individualism and atomistic isolation that democracy fosters?  “[N]ot only does democracy make each man forget his ancestors,” wrote Tocqueville,

but it hides his descendants from him and separates him from his contemporaries; it constantly leads him back toward himself alone and threatens finally to enclose him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Clearly, there is no better way to escape into the solitude of one’s own heart than to hide one’s descendant from oneself by killing him in utero—or even on the clinic table when he no longer poses any threat to the “health” of his mother.  Or does he still, even after he has been successfully “born alive”?  Does a breathing child not serve as a living testament to undeniable and unavoidable hierarchy and duty, subverting the sovereign self and his “individual rights”?   

Red Light Cameras: Just When You Thought They Were Gone for Good

More than a decade ago, the city of Greensboro had a red light camera program. Many citizens doubtless felt this was a highly inappropriate effort.

Of course, Greensboro is a progressive/socialist "paradise", so its leaders and bureaucrats probably thought this was a great idea. However, they ran into a problem with state law. Apparently, the legal framework is that the vast majority of the revenues must be redirected to the county school system. When this requirement was imposed, Greensboro quickly walked away from the program.

Now, Bob Grenier and Roch Smith are telling us that the city's bureaucrats and city council members are eager to reinstitute the program. 

But there are several dynamics of which to be aware:

1. As noted above, the county school system gets most of the money. That has apparently not changed.
2. Cities typically contract with a vendor to run the program; and that vendor might get as much as one-third of the revenue.
3. Traffic fatalities are likely multifactorial, and red light cameras will not necessarily correct the issues that lead to many traffic fatalities-- alcohol abuse; inexperienced, young drivers; and otherwise impaired drivers, for instance. The cameras therefore are mostly a revenue-generating scheme for the school system and the outside vendors.

So why are they doing this? They want to monitor us, record our habits, and punish us if we transgress. They want to control our behavior, and take our money.

It is interesting that during recent years we have seen a glorification of the relatively new phenomena of craft beer and local brewing and small distilleries. Greensboro has amply celebrated this trend. Of course, the media glorification tends to deliberately overlook the fact that many of the customers will exit these establishments, and proceed to drive their vehicles elsewhere. It is hard to see how red light cameras will reliably prevent incidents associated with these customers getting inebriated. 

Ask Tiger Woods' girlfriend.

Citizens in the city ought to revolt against this effort.

Local/ Regional Notes: Silent Sam, Greensboro Tax Increases, Rally for Abortion and Pence in the Gate City

A few observations on some items of interest:

1. The UNC Board of Governors has essentially announced it is not going to restore the Silent Sam monument to any location on its former Chapel Hill campus. The board chairman is unashamed of his pusillanimity; and appears quite unconcerned that he is in violation of state law. This Republican-controlled body is responding precisely as Republicans often do-- in a manner that is deathly afraid of the corrupt media and its allies on the left. Remember that for Republicans, there are only three types of battles worth fighting-- tax cuts, military interventions and district lines. Everything else is negotiable. These are typical weak-minded Republicans on the UNC Board of Governors.
2. That the Board is in violation of state law is being conveniently glossed over. But this is unsurprising. After all, the perpetrators of the dirty deed-- toppling and dismantling the monument-- have been given a mere wrist slap by the courts. The left is fond of whining about injustice. But in this case, the greatest injustices are that the law is being ignored; and that the criminals are not truly repaying their debt to society or making restitution.
3. The Greensboro City Manager is proposing a tax increase. The News and Record dutifully reminded us that this would be the first tax increase in more than a decade. Of course, the headlines ignore the revaluations that take place periodically which have the effect of increasing property tax payments. In addition, they ignore the fee increases that have occurred, it seems, nearly every year. 
4. The article cites efforts to increase pay levels of some city employees and also the city's debt payments. Many unnecessary expenditures and projects have been undertaken by the city over the years, and we are now paying the price. In the past, the city's African-American community has not wanted property tax increases-- because many of them are solidly middle class and own homes. But now, that source of restraint is apparently no longer effective. Many of the city employees to get pay raises, of course, are also African-American.
5. A rally in downtown Greensboro demanded that legal abortion on demand continue. This bloodthirsty crowd of 100, suffused with evil, is apparently fond of barbarism and of taking human life. It is tragic that we have so many in our midst who are so terribly lost spiritually, and who advocate for such awfulness.
6. As I drove home from work today along Cone Boulevard and Holden Road, I saw what must have been dozens of police officers and patrol cars blocking streets and redirecting traffic. I had never seen so many police at one time in Greensboro; and in fact, previously would have had no reason to believe we even had this many, because they are only sporadically seen. The occasion was undoubtedly the visit of Mike Pence to an Irving Park mansion to help Thom Tillis. Many Greensboro commuters had their drive home prolonged today; and it was to assist a gentleman get re-nominated who does not even remotely deserve it.

Nationalism in the UK and USA

It is being reported today that British Prime Minister Theresa May is seeking another Brexit referendum. 

The European Union elections are scheduled for Thursday this week. Britain should never have been part of this election because Brexit should have already occurred. But May did everything she could to block it while seeking to maintain the appearance that she was doing otherwise. She is a toady of the establishment. Her party is therefore facing potentially a huge defeat in the elections on Thursday.

May is the British equivalent of the prototypical, worthless establishment Republican in the United States. The British people sought a nationalistic outcome with Brexit that would restore their sovereignty. Similarly, the American people during the 2016 election also sought a nationalistic outcome. But folks like Richard Burr and Thom Tillis have sought to invalidate that vote, similar to what Teresa May was achieving in the UK.

The media/left complex likes to demonize and negatively stereotype those who support Brexit in the UK; and those here who support what President Trump is trying to do on the matters of immigration and trade.

But Pat Buchanan accurately describes their motivations, which are entirely legitimate:

If one could identify a cry common to populists, it might be: "We want our country back!"

Whatever may be said of populists and nationalists, they are people of the heart. They love their countries. They cherish the cultures in which they grew up. They want to retain their own unique national identities.

What is wrong with that?

Patriotism is central to nationalist and populist movements. Globalism is alien to them...

The nation, the patria, is the largest entity to which one can give loyalty and love.

It will be interesting to see what happens on Thursday in Great Britain; and whether it somehow presages what we might see here in the United States.

Tillis/ Burr/ Bishop/ Tucker: Mining for Gold among the Muck

North Carolina conservatives have spent the last week or two dealing with the fact that Richard Burr had subpoenaed Donald Trump, Jr. in spite of the Mueller report having no evidence of any type of ongoing conspiracy involving the Trump campaign with the Russians. They also have had to deal with the fact that Tillis was feted at a Washington event sponsored by an interest group that advances LGBTQ issues.

Tillis had experienced a major backlash among the party base when he initially refused to support Trump's emergency declaration to build a wall at the southern border. He quickly flip-flopped and pivoted. Now he is presenting himself as a MAGA guy, especially given the fact that Garland Tucker was announcing his candidacy in the GOP primary race for Senate next year.

It is a fairly safe bet that Tucker is more conservative than Tillis, although his website is fairly content-free. That he can finance his own campaign is a major plus. GOP primary voters need to look at his candidacy closely; although it seems likely there will be at least one or two major gaps with regard to his stands on the issues. After all, he is a Republican.

Dan Bishop's resounding victory in the 9th Congressional District primary brings another strong social conservative to the race. Of course, the corrupt media nationwide were quick to identify him by his sponsorship of HB 2, which should never have been repealed.

Bishop has openly critiqued fellow Republican elected officials as being "risk-averse". He was referring to their tendency to clutch their pearls and run for the hills when the media targets them. He had recently written:

The crisis in our leadership today, I think, is aversion to risk.  Elected officials enjoy their status, take symbolic votes and plot reelection. Very few are willing to put themselves on the line. It’s time to change that.

Bishop's Civitas Action score this year is 83.3; and his lifetime score is 87.23. That kind of lifetime score is not bad for a Republican; but again there will be gaps.

One writer at Carolina Journal quoted a political science professor who referred to Bishop as the establishment choice in the primary.

Meanwhile, President Trump is sending Mike Pence to appear at a Greensboro fundraiser for Tillis. Daniel Horowitz observes the following: 

The reality is that every Republican will come to Trump in a time of need. But they will not be there for him when he needs support in the Senate. Just the opposite: They will sandbag him with media virtue-signaling at every turn...

The president needs to think long and hard what his second term will look like if he continues supporting Republicans like Mitt Romney, Thom Tillis, and Lindsey Graham.

The Greensboro fundraiser is being hosted by a high-roller couple that has been a major donor to Elon University-- a school affiliated with the United Church of Christ which is the most liberal of the liberal mainline denominations. In fact, one of the members of this power couple served on the university's board of trustees. This is the crowd hosting Tillis and Pence.

There is reason to believe that Richard Burr was doing the bidding of Mitch McConnell when he subpoenaed Trump, Jr. Consider the words of Chris Buskirk:

My view is that this is part of a cold war between Trump and McConnell that goes back to 2015.

McConnell has never been a Trump supporter. He’s never supported the America First agenda which he has consistently resisted and subverted. McConnell is emblematic of the permanent Washington class who think they can wait out Trump’s presidency, use him to further their own goals, and then return to business as usual....

He’s also delayed confirmation of many of the president’s appointments, including key White House staff. Establishment candidates move swiftly through the Senate while known supporters of the America First agenda languish for months on end. That isn’t an accident...

They have fought the president on immigration and border control, on fair trade, and just about everything else, even encouraging the president to take a more interventionist stance in foreign policy.

It’s helpful to consider the subpoena in that context and then perhaps it makes more sense as a signal to the president that McConnell has power and is willing to use it, not just to stymie policy but to harass the president’s family. It’s worth noting that McConnell’s family’s wealth is tied directly to China and he is likely unhappy with the president’s trade policy. It’s good for the country but it might not be so good for the majority leader’s family.

Richard Viguerie and Craig Shirley comment further:

The next serious challenge Trump faces will be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the GOP swamp that he leads...

(H)e is very much threatened by Trump’s agenda of disruption. McConnell knows he is now the most serious and sophisticated political tactician who can protect the Chamber of Commerce, K Street-based benefits and emoluments that establishment Republicans have developed for decades...

Establishment Republicans like McConnell are risk-averse and prefer to avoid public fights with Democrats and the media... (Editorial note: compare with Dan Bishop's comments above.)

McConnell’s primary post-Mueller report role in stopping Trump’s agenda will be opposing or slow-walking conservative nominees for key posts in the Trump administration. Good potential nominations, such as former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for Homeland Security Secretary, are being shot down by McConnell, not because the nominees are not good, but because they agree with the president who nominated them...

The basis for McConnell’s perfidy has deep historical roots in the Republican Party. 

We know that both Burr and Tillis are McConnell's stooges. A good question is where Tucker and Bishop will shake out. Stay tuned.

Our Best NC Supreme Court Justice Explains Mecklenburg Declaration

It is Paul Newby:

Rev. Mark Creech has more also.