Something awful happened in North Carolina, under the cover of darkness, after the first minutes of a new year loped past.

A heavy dread fell, as cheats, liars, and other things that go “bump” in the night gathered to usher absolute corruption back into the Tar Heel state’s top executive position, after an all-too short four year reprieve.

North Carolina’s ineffective, basically invisible, except for the Soros-orchestrated attack ads, now-former Attorney General, Roy Cooper, took the oath of office of Governor, just after midnight on New Year’s Day.

From abc11.com:

Joined by a small group of family, friends and colleagues, the Democrat was sworn inside the old House chamber of the 1840 Capitol building nearly a week before his public inauguration ceremony.

North Carolina Chief Justice Mark Martin administered the oath to Cooper at the pared-down ceremony a block away from where Republican lawmakers recently enacted laws to limit Cooper’s power before he even took office.

Cooper was given the governorship after weeks of a bitter struggle between he and Governor Pat McCrory.

Liberal, activist judges struck down voter ID in the state weeks before the election. The subsequent result was a mountain of reports of fraud and other unsavory happenings at the polls around the state.

In the end, after battles over recounts and dismissed protests, Cooper maintained a slim lead and McCrory conceded.

Cooper has already begun ushering out stalwarts of the McCrory administration. Dismissal notices were given in the past week to a few dozen McCrory political appointees, Cooper spokeswoman Megan Jacobs said.

Turnover among those positions isn’t uncommon, but the swiftness of the dismissals carries extra weight in light of the recent legislation that limits Cooper’s number of political appointees to 425. That’s less than a third of the number McCrory was allowed to have.

Perhaps that limit will prove a boon to Cooper (as it certainly will for the citizens of the state). At this point of his term, Governor McCrory had already announced most, if not all of his appointees and was ready to hit the ground running, in order to clean up the mess several decades of Democrat governors had made.

Cooper has announced next to no appointees, even though reports are that he’d begun choosing his staff.

All anyone has heard of importance, so far, is his senior adviser, the anti-military Ken Eudy.

He’s the guy who doesn’t understand why people honor veterans, and chooses to sit, rather than show respect during ceremonies meant to honor those vets.

Then again, Cooper has been busy bringing lawsuits, in order to keep the Republican-led General Assembly from exerting their Constitutional rights to limit his freedoms to undo all of the good they, and Governor McCrory have achieved over the past four years.

Cooper, as a candidate, scoffed at the idea of having a hefty surplus available in the state’s “rainy day” fund, and suggested some of those funds could be put to better use on a few liberal pet projects.

Shortly after, the state was hit with Hurricane Matthew, which caused over $1 billion in damages to homes and property, as well as claiming over 25 lives.

If that wasn’t enough, wildfires in the western section of the state compounded the struggles.

It’s as if nature was showing up to say, “Roy Cooper – You are an idiot.”

Thankfully, the surplus McCrory and the General Assembly helped to build up was enough to keep the state from going into utter ruin.

It’s been a long election season, and I’m so disgusted with North Carolina liberals, the out-of-state players that flooded the airwaves with attack ads, in order to outright lie about McCrory’s record, and the pathetic, one-issue Republicans that allowed them to have their way, that I almost root for Cooper and his out-of-state puppet masters to do their worst.

Then I come to my senses and pray for the General Assembly and conservatives around the state to give Roy Cooper double the hell and heartache that they gave McCrory for his four years in Raleigh.

There’s not a single thing I will begrudge state Republicans that they do to give Cooper a hard time.

He’s earned it.