Editorial: Pat McCrory Takes Credit for Obama Administration Decision to Not Withhold Funds Over HB2

Republican Governor Calls President A ‘Bully’ 

It’s been a week of stunning lies and performances for North Carolina‘s GOP governor. Pat McCrory on Sunday told Fox News that he and his fellow Republican lawmakers didn’t start the HB2 fight, “the political left” did. He tried to frame himself as a victim bravely fighting big government, somehow suggesting he might be a national political figure. He called the federal government “a bully,” and claimed he had no idea how he was going to respond to the Dept. of Justice letter demanding he stop enforcement and implementation of the anti-LGBT law.

And then on Monday he sued the feds.

So much for having no idea what he was going to do, he played his audience to a tee.

In short, he lied – he knew all along what he was going to do.

What McCrory probably didn’t know was that the Attorney General was waiting, lawsuit in hand. The feds sued him back, literally a few hours later. As lawsuits go, McCrory’s looks like it was drafted by kindergartners (no offense to kindergartners), the DOJ’s looks like it was drafted by, well, the DOJ.

The governor spent the week hitting up the cable news talk shows, babbling in what has now become his stump speech, about “boys who may think they’re a girl can go into a girls’ locker room or restroom or shower facility,” and claiming he’s been insulted and offended because a Black African American woman who was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina, the daughter of a pastor and a librarian, has the gall to tell him that HB2 is like Jim Crow laws. Yes, that African American woman is a Harvard Law grad who happens to be the U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and boy does that make him mad.

McCrory also repeatedly lied this week by telling cable news hosts that only one company, Paypal, has pulled jobs out of North Carolina. In reality, over 200 companies have signed a letter opposing HB2, and literally thousands of jobs have been lost because of HB2, and far more companies than just Payal have cut jobs from the Tar Heel state, but facts rarely matter to McCrory. One study from the Williams Institute of UCLA School of Law found HB2 will cost North Carolina over $5 billion annually – not just this year, but every year.

And now, Governor McCrory Thursday night grew one foot taller on the sleazy scale.

“The White House just announced that it won’t pull federal funding to North Carolina while we take them to court,” McCrory wrote on Facebook about an hour ago. “Sometimes the only way to stop a bully is to stand your ground and stare them down.”

Note McCrory forgot to tell his followers that the Dept. of Justice is suing him, too. 

And it is true that the Obama administration this afternoon announced it will not withhold funds from North Carolina while its lawsuit against Gov. McCrory is in the courts. That is the response of a reasonable President more concerned about the education of North Carolina’s children than Pat McCrory is. It’s called leadership. It’s called compassion. It’s called knowing you’re president and don’t have to make a big, buffoon-like showing.

McCrory’s henchmen are doing his dirty work for him too.

“Josh Ellis, a McCrory spokesperson, credited the governor’s actions after enactment of House Bill 2 for the White House decision not to withhold funds to North Carolina,” Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade reported earlier today.  

“As Gov. McCrory has said all along, his administration’s assertive action against Washington overreach will protect federal funding for schools and other services while allowing the courts resolve this issue,” Ellis told Johnson.

Most people rarely lie, and only when they feel they have to. With Pat McCrory, it’s his full time job. Frankly, I’m embarrassed for him.

 

Image by NCDOTcommunications via Flickr and a CC license