Why North Carolinians Hate John Edwards

Matthew Holmes

"If you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you've lost your mind."

So says John Edwards.

And people wonder why North Carolina residents like me despise the Brat.

It’s funny, but most voters in the Tar Heel State would actually admit to an occurrence of temporary insanity—but it might surprise Edwards to learn that Carolina’s collective “senior moment” was the one that resulted in his election to the United States Senate.

Ever since that fateful November day, North Carolinians have been waiting for Election Day 2004 to exact our revenge. Had Edwards ignored the writing on the wall—for those of you not fortunate enough to live in North Carolina, it said: “Senator Edwards, we are voting you out of the Senate. Now would be a good time to run for President to save yourself the embarrassment”—the Carolina electorate would have dealt the Breck Girl a little lesson in Constitutional law, namely that the government is at all times subject to the will of the people.

What we didn’t realize, was that the man I call Senator ECNALUBMA (AMBULANCE for you Rush Limbaugh listeners in Rio Linda) would soon find himself playing deputy Barney Fife on John Kerry’s campaign ticket, forcing the rest of the country to be subjected to his nauseating political style: a strange combination of a toddler’s tantrum and an audition for a role on NBC’s Law & Order.

Let me be the first to apologize to the nation for not personally leading an election recall effort here in North Carolina. If we’d had any idea that the Edwards disease was capable of spreading to the rest of the United States, we’d have found somebody—anybody—to take Senator S’ECNALUBMA place. If the recall effort had failed, we could always have seceded from the Union until another election gave us the chance to right the wrong to the country we love so dearly.

People around the country are surprised to hear that my state holds such resentment toward Senator ECNALUBMA. He’s supposed to be so young, vibrant, and so beautifully metrosexual. Even if this were all true, it’s not much help to a man living amongst a state full of farmers, sportsmen, gun owners, physicians, basketball fans, and flag waving patriots.

Metrosexuals like Edwards might have beautifully manicured fingernails, but they typically know very little about the Southern United States. For example, traditional Southern values teach that when you make a mistake, you own up to it and work to make sure it never happens again. In that spirit, it is the mission of the majority of North Carolinians—from the mountains to the beaches—to stop the United States from making the same mistake at the polls that we made.

WHAT HAS EDWARDS DONE TO NORTH CAROLINA?

The answer to that question is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Since being in office, Senator ECNALUBMA has done nothing, that is, but campaign for the presidency.

Dick Cheney said it best in the vice presidential debate: “Frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished. You've missed 33 out of 36 meetings in the Judiciary Committee, almost 70 percent of the meetings of the Intelligence Committee. You've missed a lot of key votes: on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform. Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone."

The Senator Gone label has a duel meaning. We’re not so much upset that Edwards is never here (or in the Senate, apparently), we’re just a little peeved that he gets a paycheck each month paid for by our tax dollars for simply breathing.

Edwards has spent so little time in his home state since being elected, that he’d likely have trouble finding it on a map. But, surely he remembers that the vast majority of North Carolina voters—who overwhelmingly support President Bush—are included in the Brat’s list of people that have “lost their minds.”

The medical community in North Carolina holds a special resentment for Edwards. According to an article by Charles Hurt of The Washington Times, the American Medical Association lists North Carolina's current health care situation as a "crisis" and levels much of the blame on medical-malpractice lawsuits such as the ones that made Edwards a multi-millionaire.

One of the most successful personal-injury lawyers in the history of our state, Senator ECNALUBMA won dozens of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals across North Carolina, including more than 50 cases with verdicts or settlements of $1 million or more, according to reports by the North Carolina Lawyers Weekly.

"We are currently being sued out of existence," Dr. Craig VanDerVeer, a Charlotte neurosurgeon, told the Washington Times. "People have to choose whether they want these lawyers to make gazillions of dollars in pain and suffering awards or whether they want health care."

John Edwards’ campaign is funded primarily by a combination of liberal special interest groups and other trial lawyers. While he will never be accused of being in the pockets of medical doctors, his antics have nonetheless resulted in out of control medical malpractice costs, which means exorbitant health care costs for children, the elderly, and the middle class Edwards swears to champion.

VanderVeer continued, "The John Edwards we know crushed [obstetrics, gynecology] and neurosurgery in North Carolina. As a result, thousands of patients lost their health care."

Edwards’ success is largely thanks to his mastery of blaming doctors for delivering babies with cerebral palsy, and convincing juries that psychiatrists were responsible for their patients committing suicide.

According to the Times article, Edwards specialized in linking complications during childbirth to cerebral palsy—a complication that further advances in science have since proven false. In a sick twist from the pro-abortion Edwards, he was known to dramatize the events at birth in the courtroom by speaking to jurors as if he were the unborn baby, begging for help to be let out of the womb.

Perhaps Senator Edwards could enlighten us on what an unborn child says when its brainstem is severed as part of the partial birth abortions he and Senator Kerry routinely defend.

Not good enough? How about the Brat’s Ernest Angeley “You are Healed!” impression, when he claimed that John Kerry’s election would produce instant cures for paralyzed and terminally ill Americans. Edwards said, “Well, if we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

It is this arrogance, this malevolent superiority complex that John Edwards embodies, that has the voters of North Carolina working for his political demise. It also explains the frustration Tar Heel voters feel about not getting to personally punch his unemployment ticket in November (Medical community beware!)

Although not nearly as satisfying, North Carolina can still stick it to Senator ECNALUBMA by defeating Clinton sidekick Erskine Bowles and electing Republican Richard Burr to the Senate seat being vacated by Edwards. Bowles, who was annihilated in 2000 by Elizabeth Dole, appears to be the only liberal Democrats can dig up to run for the Senate in North Carolina.

On Election Day, voters have the opportunity to show Erskine that we meant what we said four years ago, and to send a message to Senator ECNALUBMA that we’ve learned from our past mistakes.

Matthew Holmes is a North Carolina resident and a columnist for http://www.wildfirepolitics.com. He can be reached at blade729@msn.com