Update: Welcome Carolina Plott Hound Readers!

This past Monday, I attended a Policy Matters USA (PMUSA) meeting in Cary, North Carolina. For those unfamiliar with PMUSA, it’s a group formed by former NC02 Congressional Candidate, Frank Roche. PMUSA is about raising awareness and engaging in discussion on policy issues facing both the nation and  North Carolina.  Check out their website for more details.

I’ve been a speaker at PMUSA before and talked to their group about Common Core. The format is three speakers who give a short talk and then answer a few questions from the audience. Last night’s line-up included GOP Chairman Claude Pope, author C. Edmund Wright and NC02 Democrat candidate Clay Aiken.  Yep, you read that correctly. The GOP Chairman and the Democrat trying to unseat Renee Ellmers spoke at the same event. It was a bit surreal.

Frank Roche kicked off the meeting and mentioned the PMUSA now offers some digital audio content.  He also spoke about Janet Yellin’s recent testimony and pointed out the message she was sending about unemployment being structural.

The first speaker was Claude Pope. 
He spoke about Rand Paul’s recent visit to NC; stumping for Thom Tillis. Pope also mentioned that Rand Paul had worked on the Art Pope campaign back in the day and had attended Duke. Paul will be back in NC again two more times in the near future.

Pope then turned his comments to voting and encouraged Republicans to support the primary winners in the upcoming general election. There was also a comment or two one could construe as striking at Brannon/Tea party supporters and that there were people out there that if their candidate doesn’t win that they “stand on principle” and  “take their ball and go home”.

Discussion that occurred during the Q&A that cropped up was centered on NC’s open primaries and the shenanigans that went on during this last primary cycle.  One question asked about these shenanigans and the party flipping questioned whether or not these defections to unaffiliated was indicative that perhaps something was going wrong in the party itself.

After the event concluded, I spoke to Mr. Pope for a few moments. My main concern I expressed to him was over Governor McCrory and his waning support — specifically tied to the Common Core rebrand he’s pushing. Protests are inevitable and it won’t be Moral Monday people. It will be the moms.

The second speaker was C. Edmund Wright.
He’s the author of WTF 2012: How Karl Rove and the Establishment lost… Again and also is a contributor at American Thinker.  Wright’s main message was that Washington has lost view of the big picture. He ran down a history of the last 30 years where when Republicans stuck to their beliefs and to the big picture, they won —  and handily too. Voters were drawn to the party by sticking to their core beliefs.  Wright said, “The big ideas are what the establishment GOP are not good at”. He’s correct.

I managed to get a question in tied to the “big picture” Wright talked about and asked if he concurred that the GOP messaging was just plain awful. He agreed and said, “messaging is killing the party”.

The third speaker was Clay Aiken.
He opened with some back story about himself and his special education experience in schools and volunteering at an afterschool program the YMCA. Aiken expressed his frustration that, at the time, the YMCA didn’t have the capacity to include the kinds of special ed kids that he worked with.

Aiken then weaved that background into his appearance on American Idol and how he had spoken of that back story during his time in the limelight. “I had a microphone and a platform to talk about things and effect change”, said Aiken.

That public commentary while on American Idol opened up a slew of checks made out to the “Clay Aiken Foundation” which didn’t exist at the time. The amount apparently was around $50k. Instead of sending them back, Aiken created a group to utilize that cash called the “National Inclusion Project”.

Some highlights of his comments include (paraphrased):

• Washington is not working. Sitting on legislation or not letting bills come to a vote is not right. “I am not a fan of the Pelosi rule.”
• There was someone filming and Aiken noted it as he said this would get him in trouble, but that he doesn’t always agree with his party and that voted for Lauch Faircloth.
• The motivation for being in public office should be that you want to help people in your area or state.

Questions asked included how he differs from Ellmers;  why should we believe or vote for you? Aiken didn’t really answer the question. He countered by saying that people expect their elected officials to be lawyers, professional politicians or similar and that this is not representative of what we did in the past. Aiken said we are “a representative democracy”.

A question asked if Aiken knew he was using a system of fundraising based on the old Organizing for America system. Aiken responded, “I don’t know what we use to get donations.” That’s not good.

Another person asked him quite pointedly about ISIS. Aiken clearly knew what ISIS was, but his response wasn’t very crisp. Aiken said that of course ISIS was a big concern, especially for North Carolina due to Fort Bragg. Aiken said that, “we need to be more aware of these groups”. Dissent from the audience came quickly with one audible reply along the lines that we are aware but aren’t doing anything.

Questions from there turned to securing the border.  Aiken was asked directly about where he stands on securing the border because ‘his party doesn’t seem to want to do that’.  Aiken flat-out said, “I don’t agree with them (Dem Party).” This statement garnered the only big round of applause of the evening. Aiken elaborated, ‘if we don’t spend to secure the border, we’re going to be in the same place 30 years from now’. I followed up after the meeting on that comment and made the analogy to trying to bail out a bathtub with the taps still running full blast. I expect I’ll see that same analogy used down the road by Mr. Aiken.

I also had a moment to ask Mr. Aiken about Common Core. His reply was that he didn’t believe the federal government should be directing states on standards or curriculum. Aiken but then turned around and said he did think there needed to be “commonality for commerce purposes”.   I am sure the Chamber of Commerce would love that quote. Aiken’s concern seemed to be more tied to high stakes testing and the inappropriate use of it to assess teachers and predict the potential of children.

As I’ve been very engaged in the Common Core fight, I invited Mr. Aiken to learn more about Common Core. I hope he does. It is far more of a nightmare than I think he knows.