Landslide elections are always represented in post-mortems and even some history books as inevitable events that are caused by national trends. But as much as national tickets and issues can have a tremendous impact on state and congressional elections, the truth is that every race often has a logic and a narrative of their own. All of which is to say that Donald Trump’s corrosive personality and unpopularity may well help cost the Republicans their Congressional majorities as well as a chance to take back the White House. But not everything that happens in November will be the Donald’s fault. In North Carolina, the GOP caucus in the state legislature and Governor Pat McCrory will probably be as much to blame for what could be an electoral disaster as anything the Republican presidential candidate does or says.

Governor McCrory’s decision to double down on the state’s decision to fight the federal government over a law that prohibits people from using public restrooms that do not match the gender listed on their birth certificates can be justified on various grounds. The Justice Department may be on shaky legal grounds as it attempts to impose a ban on alleged discrimination against those persons claiming transgender status. This may well be a typical overreach by federal authorities determined to make laws rather than enforce them. Nor is it clear that anyone is really being discriminated against in North Carolina as a result of the law. He also says the impetus for the passage of the law, an overly broad anti-discrimination statute in the city of Charlotte, required action by the state.

But the fact that McCrory and the North Carolina Republican Party have now primarily identified themselves in the public eye as waging a political war over bathroom access is an act of political madness that transcends the facts of the case.

Let’s be clear about this. Most Americans — and I’ll bet the same is true of many North Carolinians — don’t know or care about the legal arguments at the heart of the suit and countersuit between the state and the Justice Department. But they do know that North Carolina has decided to involve itself in who gets to go to which bathroom in a way that comes across as an attack on those who identify as transgender. They may not like the idea of people who were born as men going to the ladies room or vice versa. But the instinct of most is to think that government ought to stay out of the question of bathroom choices. Any politician who is prepared to metaphorically stand in the bathroom door the way George Wallace once tried to prevent blacks from entering an all-white university is not only picking a fight on ground that offers little benefits to his party. He also ought to have his head examined.

McCrory may argue with some justice that it is the liberals who wanted to legalize access for transgender persons to the bathroom of their choice that started this idiotic argument. But whoever it was that started it, he’s the one on national television trying to explain, with great difficulty, why the state of North Carolina is prepared to go to the legal wall over an issue that makes him look ridiculous.

In politics, perception always matters as much if not more than legal substance. It’s one thing to take a stand on religious freedom in which leftist bullies try to coerce Christian florists or bakers to betray their religious beliefs. But being the man in the bathroom door trying to enforce a law that sounds as if everyone needs to walk around with their birth certificates in order to be admitted to a restroom sounds like the moral equivalent of wearing an “I’m with stupid” t-shirt or wearing a “kick me” sign on your backside. That’s especially true if you’re running for re-election in a swing state with changing demographics that is no longer necessarily part of a solid red South.

In case, McCrory and other members of his parties haven’t noticed, public opinion about the gay marriage issue has been transformed in recent years. There is now a clear majority in favor of equal rights for gays that transcends the partisan divide. The latest polls show huge majorities oppose laws like the one in North Carolina and support laws that would ban discrimination committed against transgender persons. What the polls tell us is that whatever their opinions might be about other issues on which conservatives can hope to win, the majority of Americans have moved on from the culture wars over sexual orientation. You may think this is troubling and even believe there might be unforeseen consequences from such laws that might be troubling. But if you’re planning on a political future tying yourself or your party to a bathroom ban law is likely to be an act of political suicide.

Let’s specify that there are good reasons to worry about federal officials getting involved in this sort of state or local issue. Nobody wants predators entering bathrooms were they might hurt children. But sensible people understand that acting in a manner that sounds as if you’re treating everyone who doesn’t fit the standard gender mold as an abuser doesn’t conform to the principles of limited government or individual rights that conservatives should espouse. Right or wrong, the dynamic of this debate is such that the North Carolina GOP has chosen to take a stand on an issue that can make even the most sober and judicious politician look and sound ridiculous.

That’s what’s happened to McCrory. Having gone this far, it’s not clear that he can ever walk back the damage he’s done to himself and the state party. While Christian conservatives and those who shake their heads at the dizzying speed with which the cultural consensus has changed may applaud him, the plain fact is that he has found himself on the losing end of a foolish debate.

Whether they are liberals or conservatives, most Americans don’t like the idea of having to debate bathroom access in this manner. That should have been painfully obvious to an otherwise sensible politician like McCrory. That he chose to ignore common sense and dive headfirst into an absurd issue that can only make him look like a fool is the sort of thing that can only make the rest of us scratch our heads and wonder what he was thinking. If, as is likely, this foolishness winds up costing him his re-election and sinking his party in North Carolina (as well as tarnishing the GOP brand elsewhere as Todd Akin’s abortion and rape comments did in 2012), this can’t be blamed on Trump. Political stupidity has many variations, but not all are named Donald.

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