By CECIL BOTHWELL

Republicans regained control of the North Carolina General Assembly in 2010 after something over a century, though any semblance of consistency between the GOP in the post-Civil War south and the GOP in the post-Obama era is completely coincidental.

Recall that Republican carpetbaggers flooded into the power vacuum of the defeated Confederacy, and were generally, and not unreasonably, hated by Southern Democrats. Republican African-American politicians were elected to office in former slave states. 

The Old Guard succeeded in retaking control. The Democratic Party then imposed Jim Crow laws, in many ways reestablishing racial suppression and de facto slavery. Blacks arrested on trumped up charges could end up on chain gangs building roads and rails, or as leased out labor for plantations. (Much of the labor on the rail line to Asheville from Old Fort was done by black prisoners, many of whom died in the effort.)

The Democratic Party, led by its power base in the north and east, moved left, while the Republican Party moved right. When Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Law, he observed that his party was forfeiting the South for a generation. Sure enough, Dixiecrats moved to the Republican party (viz: Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.) Nixon’s Southern Strategy ginned up support among racist Dems, and that support continued for Reagan, and both Bushes.

While southern states began to vote for Republicans on the national level, in much of the South Democrats still controlled the Courthouse and the State House. Old family and community ties held fast. Hence we had some GOP governors through the 20th Century, but the NC General Assembly was beyond their reach.

The combination of an economic meltdown and the election of a black President in 2008 finally garnered Republicans the traction they needed to claim a majority in 2010. The self-styled tea party movement managed to blame the Obama administration for the Bush economic collapse, and the undercurrent of racism was all too apparent on bumper stickers and tee shirts, and sometimes merely inuendo.

The new GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives was unable to accomplish anything much beyond throwing logs under administration wheels, given the opposition control of the Senate. But Tar heel Republicans held both houses in Raleigh. They quickly passed a radical right legislative agenda, apparently heedless of the damage they would impose on citizens and the economy.

A one-cent sales tax add-on was permitted to expire, reducing state revenue by a billion dollars. An income tax cut was enacted that will only benefit upper income households (though it pretends to be aimed at small businesses.) Failure to provide state matching funds forfeited another $1 billion in federal Medicare money. Funding for the state university system was slashed. Funds for primary and secondary education were axed. Environmental protection was reduced. 

At the local level it was payback time as well. Though the GOP likes to style itself as the party of small government and fiscal responsibility, we have seen an unprecedented level of interference and imposed costs here in Asheville and Buncombe County.

With support from his party colleagues, Rep. Tim Moffitt rammed through a reorganization of Buncombe County government that expanded our Commission from 5 to 7 members (so much for smaller government.)

He pushed through a plan to remove Asheville’s water system from city control and hand it over to the Municipal Sewerage District, preceded by a mandate for the City and MSD to study the proposal — studies which will cost rate payers $300,000- $400,000 before any merger actually occurs (so much for fiscal responsibility). 

Moffitt’s cohort sharply reduced the ability of cities to cope with large commuter populations by curtailing annexation—a restriction that will eventually result in either substantial tax increases for city property owners, or sharp reductions in city services.

The politics of payback are nasty and short-sighted. North Carolina voters were not told that this was the GOP agenda during the 2010 election cycle. The knee-jerk reaction to a bad economy and a black President is playing out in a series of legislative actions that will create long term hardship for our state. 

One hopes we’ll see fewer jerky knees and more thoughtful votes this November.

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Cecil Bothwell is a member of the Asheville City Council.