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OPINION: Out of touch

The special election in Wisconsin that gave Democrats a majority on their state supreme court offered Democrats in North Carolina some lessons. While access to abortion was the driving force, the overall extremism of the GOP broadened the reach of their message. The Republican majority in the North Carolina legislature is offering plenty of ammunition.

Democrats in Wisconsin used the abortion issue to drive up turnout where they had a base receptive to the message. However, in more conservative areas, they focused on other issues, including crime. They also hammered the GOP for being out of touch with average Americans.

In North Carolina, Democrats have plenty to talk about. Governor Roy Cooper is rallying the troops to urge members of the legislature to uphold his veto of the latest GOP bill to restrict abortion. He’s called for rallies around the state tomorrow to sound the alarm. It’s an early call to action that could set the stage for 2024.

While abortion restrictions may motivate younger voters, especially women in urban areas, Democrats have a lot more in their arsenal. The GOP passed voucher bills that will take money from students in poor schools and give it to wealthy families. They are stealing from the poor to give to the rich. The people most harmed by the legislation live in poor, rural counties and the school systems hurt the most are the ones that are already struggling. It’s a cruel and regressive policy.

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While guns have become the leading cause of death among children, Republicans in North Carolina are arming emotionally unstable people and criminals. And they’re trying to remove additional restrictions that protect the public. Instead of trying to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, the GOP believes that more guns make us safer. In their fever dream fantasies, heavily armed vigilantes will protect us from criminals and psychopaths. When a deranged gunman enters a school or a shopping center, some working class hero will pull his unrestricted, unregistered concealed pistol and take out the psychopath.

Of course, in reality, the deranged gunman buys his weapons without proof of anything through private sales and kills the first five people before anybody knew what was happening. Hindsight shows his rampage was predictable but any laws that may have stopped him had been stripped away by the GOP and the NRA. He may have been stopped by police who questioned his suspicious behavior as well as the gun in his back pocket and the one strapped to his leg as he was scoping out the mall, but they couldn’t do anything about it because Republicans.

Republicans are out of touch with everybody but their extremist base. They are putting young women at risk by reducing access to abortion care. They are taking money out of struggling schools and giving it to rich people in the form of vouchers, despite telling us for years that vouchers were only designed to level the playing field for poor families. They are arming dangerous people and taking away the tools law enforcement needs to protect us. There’s something for everybody to hate about Republican rule. They should hear about it in the next election.

Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Mills spent 20 years as a political and public affairs consultant. Republished from PoliticsNC.com.



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