NC House Speaker’s slush fund spending is emblematic of today’s Trumpified GOP

Donald Trump’s malignant eight-year run in American politics has helped give rise to many deeply troubling phenomena: The first nation’s attempted coup d’état.* The resurgence of unabashed white nationalism. A bizarre alliance between religious conservatives and some of the nation’s most rapacious and predatory corporate actors. A widespread willingness to embrace crazy conspiracy theories and distrust science. More wasted years in the fight against climate change. The demise of reproductive freedom.

And then there is the rather remarkable transformation of the modern Republican Party.

For most of the last several decades prior to Trump, the GOP was, first and foremost, the party of libertarian conservatism. Shaped by the legacy of politicians like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, modern republicanism was about small and limited government, low taxes, and at least in theory, an opposition to corruption.

Here in North Carolina, groups like the John Locke Foundation railed for years against political bosses who hoarded power and doled out cash, favors and “economic incentives” to the well-connected – a stance that was loudly and regularly echoed by many Republican politicians.

Today, things are very different.

In the era of Donald Trump’s GOP and its reactionary populism, power is the name of the game – power to reward friends and family, power to punish adversaries and enemies, power to make deals and amass as much personal wealth as possible as quickly as possible, power to favor certain religions and their adherents, power to enforce a very specific set of directives for how people should live their lives.

In North Carolina, few politicians have better exemplified this transformation in recent years than North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore. Like Trump, Moore’s long stint in high political office has coincided with incidents of questionable personal conduct, allegations of self-enrichment and the meting out of vindictive punishment to critics.

But for a recent and excellent example of how Moore has exemplified a dramatic and Trumpian divergence from traditional Republican principles when it comes to making law and policy, check out last week’s news report in the Charlotte Observer entitled “NC will spend $45M to speed up fix for one of state’s ‘most congested’ interchanges.”

As reporter Mary Ramsey explained, the $45 million in question won’t be coming from the place one would ordinarily expect – namely, budgeted Department of Transportation appropriations:

The report continued:

To which all a supporter of good and honest government (and maybe even a Goldwater conservative) can say in response is: “Wait…what?! The Speaker of the North Carolina House has $100 million to simply dole out however he chooses? Since when?”

But, of course, in the era of the Trump GOP, and considering recent past actions, such a revelation comes as no real surprise. Both Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger have aggressively and relentlessly amassed and consolidated their personal power throughout state government ever since they took office. That’s one of the reasons two small-town lawyers elected by tens of thousands of voters have managed to dominate all three branches of government and eclipse and usurp the power of a governor elected by millions.

And by all indications, this is a pattern to which Moore intends to stick after he leaves the legislature next year to run for Congress. Readers will be shocked – shocked! – to learn that while the highway interchange in question is not in Moore’s current state House district, it will prove enormously popular with the constituents Moore aims to represent in the newly drawn 14^th congressional district, which includes – you guessed it – western Mecklenburg County.

Talk about a creative way to fund one’s campaign.

None of this is to imply that improving the congested highway interchange in question is a bad idea. Indeed, one supposes that it will be welcomed by drivers and is probably necessary. Democratic Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles attended the announcement to laud the new largesse.

But it must be said plainly and loudly that this is a terrible and, yes corrupt, way to fund such a project. And this will be true for any of the other causes or projects on which Moore deigns to shower the $55 million he presumably has left in his slush fund – however worthy they may be.

The bottom line: though it’s often hypocritical, the idea of politicians showing up to claim credit for publicly funded projects is nothing new or objectionable.

The problem with Tim Moore’s actions is not that he helped direct public dollars to a public need. Rather, it’s the cynical, nontransparent, hypocritical, undemocratic, and blatantly self-serving way he went about it.

Sadly, however, in the era of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, such an approach has become the preferred method of exercising political power.

*…The first attempt to overthrow the U.S. government — Wilmington, NC was the site of a successful coup d’état in 1898.