Grover C. Norquist and Patrick Gleason write in Reuters that
close examination shows a vocal minority is overreacting to Republicans implementing the fiscal policies they ran on — and that a majority of voters agreed were needed to make the state economically competitive.
Take tax reform, the issue that has been the top item on the docket this year — and drawn the most ire from Democrats. North Carolina has the highest income tax and unemployment rates in the South. This is no coincidence.
North Carolina’s punitive tax rates put the state at a competitive disadvantage in attracting employers and investors. Small businesses, responsible for a majority of job creation, are also held back due to the onerous tax code. …
Like Walker in Wisconsin, McCrory and the North Carolina state Republicans inherited a budgetary mess from their Democratic predecessors. Rather than raising taxes, and bleeding more revenue from the private sector, as was standard operating procedure under decades of Democratic rule, these Republicans changed course — putting spending in line with revenues. This is what North Carolina voters elected a new Republican majority to do.
Liberal pundits will try to portray what is happening in North Carolina as dysfunction. But it is the opposite.
Those pundits include The New York Times’ editorial board, whose error-filled submission this week was gleefully hooted by people who’ve spent the last few weeks denying that outside agitators were trying to influence politics in North Carolina. (That the Times’ screed was in line with a leaked strategy memo earlier this year was no accident, but it was a big card to play so early; all that’s left now is for the president to give mean, cruel North Carolina one of his effete lectures.)
Other than pleasing the vocal minority, however, the Times editorialists had effectively written the Tar Heel politics equivalent of their picante recipe.
