Calling North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore a “staunch conservative” is one of those casual misnomers our political lexicon permits that sacrifices accuracy for the sake of general categorization. In fact, there is nothing conservative about Moore; he does nothing for the purpose of cautious protection of established precedent, which defines the term in most dictionaries. No, Moore is reckless in his agenda, his means of pursuing it, and the overt graft he seems to expect as a natural perk of his public office. In other words, Moore is precisely the type of low life who informs our worst cynicism about American politics.
Elected to the NC House in 2002 with campaign contributions totaling $45,000, Moore’s cake walk victory in 2016 was accompanied by a war chest of more the $1.7 million. And whether it’s been directly intervening to spare a company he co-owns both late fees for failing to comply with state regulators and fines associated with violating pollution standards, or earmarking millions of dollars for projects within his district to benefit contributors, Moore has never been shy about using his position for personal benefit. Why would he be? Ethics oversight has been fully controlled by the GOP for years.
As for his position on the issues, Moore is a Fox/AM culture war caricature with venom to spare on must every pertinent, and more importantly, non-pertinent issue of the day. Obsessed with the LGBT community, Moore makes it his business to make their life in the Tar Heel State hard. The leading force behind legislation to make it a crime for a transgender person to use the bathroom they identify with, which put NC among the national leaders of ugly LBGT reactionaries, Moore wears his bigotry toward any non repressed, guilt-ridden heterosexual like a badge of courage. Indeed, he never met any group other than white, wealthy, Christian intolerants he didn’t want to marginalize.
SB 359 is a classic Moore pet. The measure makes it a murder rap to intentionally carry out or attempt “to perform an overt act that kills a child born alive” during an abortion procedure. Additionally, any health-care practitioner who fails to provide the appropriate degree of care to a child born alive would face felony charges.” In other words, the .000000001 % of evil abortionists who somehow botch a late-term procedure and then snuff the infant’s life out on the operating table could get the needle.
The rhetoric that accompanied the measure was similarly scurrilous as the national GOP talk track, flat out lying that late-term abortion was common, while implying it was the preferred avenue of women too lazy to address their pregnancy earlier. The proposed law really had only two purposes: to permit GOP bible thumpers to check off the box established by the Trump-adopted talking point fiction that abortionists across the nation are zealously murdering fully developed babies; and intimidating staff at family planning clinics. When General Assembly Republicans failed to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of the legislation, it brought home the reality that, after years of veto-proof majorities, slow and steady gains by Democrats now necessitated more creative thinking in order to ram their schemes through the statehouse.
Moore and the caucus he leads have one overall maxim when it comes to budgetary matters….money talks and the poor can take a walk. Tax breaks for business, read contributors, always come first and last. Indeed, tax relief and social spending austerity are the peas and carrots of Moore’s budget stewardship. Of course, outliers of largesse can be found, like the 82K provided for a special position created for a former fiancé of Moore, whose resume was the only one his office forwarded to fill the special job vacancy. But spending white upper bracket tax money on priorities like education, aid programs for the poor, even infrastructure not earmarked for GOP districts? Not so much.
All of this converged Wednesday morning as most American politicos commemorated 9/11. Moore got the bright idea he could lie to Democrats’ faces and assure them no votes would be taken that morning and then, while the saps were out being patriots, override Governor Cooper’s veto of a contentious budget package they had earlier passed, free of GOP anathemas like Medicaid expansion and money for education. So Moore’s idea of creativity was simple shamelessness and authoritarian kabuki. Nice! Look your fellow elected officials in the eye and lie. Hey, whatever works! As the few Democrats who were present in the chamber called out Moore’s idiocy for the outrage it was, he had their microphones disabled. One Democratic member had to be surrounded by colleagues to avoid being physically confronted by security as she denounced the charade. Nice touch, Himmler.
There is the famous saying by Winston Churchill that democracy is the worst system there is except for all the others. He may have reconsidered that observation had he witnessed the disgusting display in NC this week. At the end of the day democracy, no matter how rough and tumble, requires a modicum of honor and civility. Moore and his caucus now offer neither. Whatever other systems are out there, it’s doubtful their curs are any lower than Moore and his crew. The Speaker claims he texted members to be present, which of course, Democrats ignored as the status of the session’s most important legislation was at stake. Perfectly reasonable!
When bad faith is all one side has to offer, there is no accommodation possible. Since 2010 that has been the case in the North Carolina state legislature. Wednesday it finally reach its logical conclusion; there is nothing left to the imagination. Our President has not yet weighed in on the matter; I have a 401K to bet on whether or not he will support Moore’s deceit. Limbaugh and Levin will surely be speaking of the move as a model for other legislatures.
Optimists have declared Moore stepped over the line and cooked his party’s goose for the upcoming election cycle. It would be nice to have confidence in that assessment. Any takers? Another shade of ruin. BC