Comparing the exit of President Obama and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, the New York Times’ David Leonhardt complains that Republicans are now waging a novel form of partisan warfare. But if Republicans have started bringing guns to parliamentary knife fights, it’s because Democrats have stabbed them in the back too many times.
That’s not partisan analysis. It’s a historical fact, one that Mr. Leonhardt ought to review before accusing the Party of Lincoln of normalizing anti-democratic behavior.
Undoubtedly bitter, the last-minute battle over executive authority in North Carolina has attracted liberal outrage. During a special session, Republicans sabotaged Gov.-elect Roy Cooper, hobbling the Democrat before he even enters office. National newsrooms quickly decried the tactic as unprecedented legislative coup.
That conclusion is unfounded. Infighting between branches isn’t anything new in the Tar Heel State. Democrats were perfecting the practice long before it was cool to accuse Republicans of undermining representative government.
After losing the governor’s mansion in years past, Democrats at the Raleigh statehouse regularly moved to limit the authority of an incoming executive. It’s already happened three times, as conservative historian John Hood recently pointed out. Liberals slashed at the hamstrings of Republicans Gov. James Holshouser, Gov. Jim Martin and Lt. Gov. Jim Gardner.
More than anything else, Republicans are guilty of plagiarizing the Democratic playbook. Nostalgic for the 1980s, they’ve tried to limit gubernatorial staffing in order to limit how many political employees the Cooper can hire and fire. Sure, that might be brazen. It’s just not original. Democrats ran the exact same play in 1985 against Martin.
Democrats claimed legislative supremacy each time they limited a Republican executive. And they were right, according to David McClennan, a politics professor at Meredith College just a few miles away from the capitol building. “North Carolina has always had a weak governor ever since the first constitution in 1776,” he tells The Washington Examiner. “Even after two revisions, the Constitution has kept a lot of power in the general assembly.”
In other words, the legislature’s current struggle with the executive could be interpreted as a democratic renaissance, returning power to the branch closest to voters. But Leonhardt has demonstrated, that what’s acceptable for lawmakers wearing blue uniforms, is forbidden for those sporting red jerseys. The rule change is fundamentally unfair.
Perhaps North Carolina Republicans are being politically imprudent. Maybe they’re setting themselves up for a world of hurt when voters hit the polls back-to-back in 2017 and 2018. Either way they’ll be held accountable.
But with their recent clips, Leonhardt and the New York Times editorial page have pushed liberal opportunism. More than obnoxious that’s dangerous. Leonhardt is presenting his whitewashed history as a prescription for carte blanche obstruction, encouraging Democrats to maintain a “higher threshold” for working with Republicans in Congress.
In light of recent — and very accessible — history that moral superiority falls apart. If the job of the press is to keep score, the nation’s paper of record has done a disservice.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
