Roy Cooper is no victim of campaign dishonesty

The ex-governor has spent too long benefiting from this style of politics to complain much about it now.

I continue to believe that overstating the connection between the Charlotte light-rail killer and Roy Cooper is damaging to the overall Whatley campaign.

Honestly, I’m making a strategic argument just as much as moral one. I don’t like campaigning that stretches the truth, but I also don’t think it works very well in a case like this.

Voters are much more likely to come away thinking Michael Whatley is lying than believing Roy Cooper has blood on his hands. And once that impression sets in, Cooper gets an opening to duck the broader and more serious case against him.

It also gives the media an easy line of attack that will keep getting repeated. A new Observer piece saying the “loudest case against Roy Cooper is a flat-out lie” is proof enough of that. If Republicans keep pushing the weakest version of the argument, they should expect more coverage built around the idea that Whatley is lying. That is not where this race should be.

As I wrote in my piece on Cooper’s “secret list,” the Bro…