Carter Wrenn, on the blog, Talking About Politics:

The liberal folks over at ProgressNC let fly with a broadside at the Governor about his ethics, then let fly again with a press conference and, by then, they had the folks at the Charlotte Observer so stirred up they let fly with broadside of their own asking, Was Pat McCrory fibbing then, or is he fibbing now?

The way the liberals tell it Governor McCrory underhandedly omitted facts from his Financial Disclosure Reports to hide conflicts of interest – and that he was paid a lot of money by less than saintly corporations.

Now it’s hard to believe anyone — even the liberals — thinks the State Ethics Commission (which as long as anyone can remember has been a toothless tiger) is going to strip the governor’s epilates off in public but, then again, it may be the Ethics Commission is just a way station on the way to court which is where the liberals really want to end up – which would open a whole new can of worms.

Either way, this is no one time liberal rant about the foibles of Republican politicians. ProgressNC has fired the opening salvo in the Governor’s race and they mean to go right on chasing Pat.   

And chasing Pat
from the right

After being blasted by the liberals (for hiding conflicts of interest) Governor McCrory ran head-on into a second broadside from the opposite direction: Tired of Medicaid wrecking havoc on its budget, the state Senate served notice on the governor his time is up — he’s had his chance to fix Medicaid and failed, so the legislature’s going to appoint an independent board to solve the problem.    

Now, for the governor, there’s two ways to look at the Senate’s proposal. It’s certainly a slap in the face. But, on the other hand, it may be a blessing in disguise. After all, the Senate just proposed to take the biggest tarbaby in all of state government off the Governor’s hands — so, perhaps, the practical thing for him to say would be, “Thank heavens. Take it. You’re welcome to do it.”

But instead, of course, the governor’s fighting the Senate tooth and nail. He dislikes losing control of roughly half of state government even more than he disliked the Legislature setting up a commission to handle the coal ash cleanup.

Now all this sounds like there’s a great deal of hostility between the governor and the Senate but, in a way, the senators like the governor just fine and want him to get reelected — they just think he didn’t get the job done on Medicaid.

It’s also hard not to empathize with the governor: He’s got liberals shooting at him from one side and Republicans shooting at him from the other and whoever claimed the middle ground was the safe place to be never got caught in a crossfire.