| Begala Admits Defeat in North Carolina |
state swung for blue state Barack Obama four years ago! Paul Begala, a leader for the pro-Obama Super-PAC Priorities USA Action, has declared in an October 22 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that President Obama has given up on North Carolina, now turning his attention to six other swing states, including Colorado, New Hampshire, and Ohio.
I am not surprised to see the bright red resurgence of conservative Republican principles burst forth from the Old North State. From its established status as colony to statehood to the present day, North Carolina has stood up to entitled elites and centralized control. From the very beginning settlers in South Carolina who resented the plantation aristocracy moved north, taking with them an attachment to individual liberty and private enterprise, setting up log cabin individual, smaller farming operations, and a lesser attachment to large-landed slavery. So began North Carolina, an extension of life and liberty for those who were looking for it.
After the American Revolution, North Carolina stuck to its rugged experience, ratifying the constitution much later than her fellow states (number 12). She was one of the latter states to secede from the Union during the War Between the States, in large part because small farmers and individual artisans had no interest in being pulled along to fight a war for landed slavocrat gentry at the expense of the rest of the South.
How can we forget native son President Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth President of the United States, who started in poverty, autodidact Johnson prospered into a master tailor through Southern politics to become the Vice President on the Union Party ticket with Abraham Lincoln. He stood steadfast behind a policy of peaceable reconciliation with the seceding states, and protected the constitutional check and balances of the Presidency against a Radical Congress. Then there's Southern and conservative apologist Jesse Helms and even Red Cross' Elizabeth Dole, two gentle yet powerful figures who did not hide their allegiance to state independence within the federal compact.
Both "right to work" and "right to life", North Carolina has been a right-red state then and now, committed to a legacy of individual liberty, private enterprise, and traditional values. Just this year, the Tar Heel state stuck to the recognition of traditional marriage by constitutional referendum, a position which President Obama openly repudiated, in large part because of his gaffe-prone Vice President announcing Obama's support for a policy out of step with 60%+ of North Carolinians.
I am not surprised that North Carolina is resurrecting its conservative core and rejecting the Obama mantra of "hope and change" which has changed the hope of economic recovery into a more distant verity. With North Carolina's unemployment at 9.6%, the Obama Administration has pursued trillion dollar annual deficits, with failed currency and diminished investment it their wake. ObamaCare, a health insurance mandate with a crippling tax, will hit six million families in the next year, followed by rising premiums, diminished access, and more hospital closures. Let's not forget the aborted Cap and Trade Bill, the failed 2009 stimulus, and a failed energy policy which blocked Keystone and off-shore drilling.
The political climate is shifting against President Obama, whose challenger Mitt Romney has signaled to voters across the country that he has the skill and the will to bring back prosperity to this country. Still, I was surprised that Obama supporter Paul Begala would so freely admit that Obama's election map chances are getting smaller by the minute. Nevertheless, Romney supporters and anti-Obama elements throughout the country should rejoice and thank the voters of North Carolina for shifting support away from four more years of failure and into a new direction of limited government and individual liberty.
Thank you, North Carolina!