It may or may not be apocryphal, but there is an infamous World War II-era quote attributed to Russian dictator Josef Stalin in which he responded to the suggestion that the leader of the Catholic church might be able to use his moral influence to help resolve a portion of the conflict.
“The Pope?” Stalin interrupted. “How many divisions does he have?”
Over the last several decades, Stalin’s crude remark has regularly been cited as the very definition of cynical, amoral, ends-justify-the-means statecraft. And for most of that time, and in most places, American leaders across the political spectrum did not understand that to be a compliment.
In 2026, things have changed.
Today, longstanding American political traditions in elections and lawmaking like respect for one’s adversary, self-discipline and sacrifice, abiding by established rules and roles, and commitments to open debate, widespread voter participation and honorable, nonpartisan public service are fast becoming passé. Instead, accumulating and maintaining power at all costs now trumps all other priorities.
And in few places is this disturbing trend more readily evident than in North Carolina. Especially over the last decade as Donald Trump’s transformation of conservatism has come to full flower, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the state’s Republican leaders have made Stalin’s brand of raw power politics their North Star.
The examples are sadly and tragically numerous, but for a most recent, egregious and high-profile example, consider the appalling transformation of the office of the state auditor — the state’s accountant.
While there’s no doubt that past Democratic and Republican auditors brought different temperaments and agendas to the position, at no time was the auditor’s office designed or understood to serve as a powerful administrator of broad executive authority — much less a repository of powers illegitimately snatched from other constitutional officers and transformed into hyperpartisan weapons.
Unfortunately, thanks to the results of the 2024 election in which Democrats swept the state’s higher-profile Council of State offices, Republican legislators decided that remaking the auditor’s office in such a way was just the ticket for blunting the will of voters and expanding their power.
And so it is that current Republican Auditor Dave Boliek — a willing and happy accomplice in this sudden, unprecedented and undemocratic scheme — is now not only overseeing the state’s elections but doing so in a blatantly and embarrassingly partisan fashion. One need look no further than the scandal surrounding Boliek’s hiring of veteran right-wing political operative — Dallas Woodhouse as a key election administrator to understand the deep and overt nature of the corrupt cynicism.
Indeed, as NC Newsline’s Lynn Bonner reported recently, email exchanges obtained under a public records request reveal numerous incidents during Woodhouse’s brief tenure as Boliek’s special “elections liaison” to local county election boards in which — surprise! — he sought to convince and advise local boards to craft rules in hopes of aiding GOP candidates.
But, of course, as sobering as such actions are, none comes as any kind of shock. North Carolina Republican legislative leaders have long been employing (and continue to employ) the very same brand of amoral, win-at-all-costs tactics in countless other arenas.
From the overtly partisan and racial gerrymandering (i.e., election rigging) repeatedly injected into the state’s electoral maps, to the never-ending efforts in the Legislative Building to consolidate power and avoid and silence debate, to the constant efforts to defund the offices of Democratic officeholders, to the embarrassing politicization of the state’s judiciary, the priority of obtaining, maximizing and holding onto power at all costs has come to guide virtually all significant policymaking decisions for the state’s GOP leadership.
Just two weeks ago, Republican lawmakers passed the latest of several bills approved in recent years that have been designed to elevate right-wing state Chief Justice Paul Newby into a virtual judicial autocrat. House Republican Speaker Destin Hall even voiced support for Newby using the powers included in the bill to suspend judges without pay who issue opinions with which the political right disagrees.
What’s next — the distinctly Stalinist idea of suspending legislators who vote the wrong way?
And lest anyone dismiss as naïve the citation of the above actions as a failure to grasp the reality of “business-as-usual, hardball politics,” rest assured, it’s the defenders and apologists for the GOP’s transformation who are the naïve ones. Yes, North Carolina has always been a home to hardball politics, but the repeated cynical and amoral power grabs of the present era make the actions of late 20th-century Democratic power brokers like Jim Hunt and Marc Basnight look like child’s play.
As David Denby noted in a recent profile of famed political philosopher Hannah Arendt in The New Yorker magazine, it was the conservative Arendt who explained in the “The Origins of Totalitarianism” how democratic institutions can gradually morph into “bureaucratic despotism” through the working of many of the practices now embraced by the modern GOP. And it’s one of the great tragedies of our time that so many people who once claimed to despise the tactics and ethics of autocracy now so readily and energetically embrace them.
Senior contributor and award-winning journalist Rob Schofield authors regular commentaries and hosts the ‘News & Views’ weekly radio show/podcast. A part of NC Newsline since 2006, he served as editor from 2017 to 2025 and, prior to that, worked for many years as an attorney championing the rights of low-income people and civil liberties.
