The Republican legislature has been losing the public relations war for weeks now.
Faced with a $2.5 billion budget shortfall, the major story coming out of the legislature has been budget cuts, allowing Democrats to portray the GOP as pinched misers out to fire teachers and wring the last nickel from schoolchildren.
Last week, there were signs that Republican lawmakers were wising up.
In the Senate budget proposal unveiled last week, the GOP offered an alternative narrative. Yes, there would be large budget cuts in public education.
But they also laid out a plan to gradually reduce class size in grades one through three to a ratio of one teacher per 15 students, develop a merit pay plan to reward the best teachers, and expand the student school year by five days by canceling teacher workdays. This is a plan that many non-ideological taxpayers may find attractive.
It immediately changed the political dialogue. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue, who had sharply criticized nearly every Republican proposal, was rendered nearly mute. The N.C. Association of Educators, the main teachers' lobby, was put on the defensive.
The Republicans had rediscovered a political truth. It is not enough to be just against something - like spending. You have to tell people how you plan to help make their lives better.
For months, the narrative coming from Jones Street has been that the green-eyeshade Republicans are going to slash public education.
To a certain degree they had little choice but to cut education, which makes up a large percentage of the state budget. Perdue in her budget proposal to the legislature also recommended sharply cutting education. They inherited a huge budget shortfall caused by a deep recession that nearly every state is dealing with. Part of it is policy. The GOP legislature early on locked itself into a position of letting the temporary tax increase passed by the last Democratic-controlled legislature expire.
Perdue has traveled the state hammering the legislature on the cuts, and has sent her Cabinet out to do the same.
This is a political message that has been working for Democrats and against Republicans.
In March, voters preferred generic Republicans to Democrats in the legislature by 45-41 percent, according to a survey by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm based in Raleigh. In a survey taken this month, they preferred Democrats by a 45 to 43 percent margin.
At the same time, Perdue, while still unpopular, has begun to find her political legs, and has begun to rise in the polls.
The new Republican Senate plan gives the GOP a chance to change the debate. It is not just about cuts. It is now also an argument about ideas.
The most successful Republican leaders, such as former Govs. Jim Martin and Jim Holshouser, understood the importance of being supportive of public education, providing a GOP alternative.
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