In North Carolina, a hard-right shift hits a roadblock [View all]

[Triana]

. . . the GOP has turned America’s 10th-largest state —traditionally known as a rare bastion of southern moderation—into a massive testing ground for pure conservative ideology. The hard-right lurch has already inflicted hardship on countless North Carolinians. And it has offered a real-world glimpse of the playbook that many conservatives—including McCrory’s hosts at Heritage—would like to use across the country.

For McCrory—and his audience at Heritage—his extreme red-state experiment was supposed to deliver a success story that conservatives could be proud of. Instead, a growing backlash against the overreach—laws affecting women, minorities and the poor—is starting to cause real pain for the governor and his allies. His approval ratings have declined sharply, as have those for his Republican legislators.

The pushback against McCrory’s harsh brand of governance began with home-grown progressive protests known as “Moral Monday” events. The campaign has been spearheaded not by state Democrats, but by a coalition of activist groups including the NAACP, labor unions, environmental groups, abortion-rights advocates.

A summer protest in Ashville, a lively college town in the state’s mountainous western region, drew a passionate, racially-diverse, overflow crowd heavy on teachers, students, volunteer activists, and young families.

“Don’t make any mistake, America,” William Barber III, the state’s NAACP president and Moral Monday’s most prominent spokesman, told the crowd. “This is no momentary hyperventilation and liberal screaming match. This is a movement. And we intend to win.”

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http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/north-carolilna-hard-right-shift-hits-roadblock