• The feelgood story of the holiday season: Well-known North Carolina political brothers Dallas Woodhouse (conservative Republican consultant, formerly of Americans for Prosperity) and Brad Woodhouse (Democratic activist and former national party communications director) appeared Tuesday on C-SPAN to discuss a new documentary about their polarized politics … and mom calls in. Joy Woodhouse’s call to the program almost broke the Internet.
• It’s never too early to conduct a presidential poll, I suppose. Public Policy Polling surveyed North Carolinians on a potential 2016 field, and found neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson leading the pack of nine with 19 percent of Republican respondents. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was second with 15 percent. The poll excluded several likely contenders, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Hillary Clinton leads the Democratic field with 52 percent; Vice President Joe Biden is second with 18 percent. In a head-to-head matchup, Carson and Clinton tie at 42 percent.
• Sen.-elect Thom Tillis, R-N.C., names the key members of his Capitol Hill staff, including some familiar hands from his tenure as House speaker and a few new faces with significant experience in Washington.
• And congratulations to the family members of the ‘5’ Royales, the Winston-Salem based pioneers of R&B and jump blues who were named members of the 2015 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Royales have been cited as influences by such legends as James Brown, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and Steve Cropper (Booker T. and the M.G.s, the Blues Brothers band). Cropper told the Winston-Salem Journal:
I truly hope one of [guitarist] Lowman Pauling’s family members is there to accept for him. God bless all of the ‘5’ Royales. It’s about time. They, too, helped construct rock and roll as we know it.
The last original member of the group died in 2005.
