Roy Cooper has begun the process of announcing his cabinet, and I hope feckless, sniveling Republicans who voted against Pat McCrory are satisfied.

Cooper has, predictably, chosen to keep some of his longtime advocates nearby.

Noelle Talley, who served as spokesperson with the North Carolina Attorney General’s office for Cooper’s tenure there will serve in Cooper’s press office.

She’s basically the person assigned to shrug her shoulders when the press asks why nothing is getting done, or to outright lie and say Cooper is doing a fine job.

Other picks:

Cooper is tapping William McKinney to be his chief legal counsel. It’s a job certain to keep McKinney busy. Cooper is already suing the General Assembly to overturn Republican-backed measures to strip away his powers over state elections oversight.

Cooper won a small battle last Friday, when a Wake County Superior Court judge temporarily blocked the controversial law.

We’ll see if that holds. Everything the General Assembly did was within their rights, per the state Constitution.

The new governor also announced Barbara Gibson will head up the State Office of Human Resources.

Here’s the real kicker, however.

Cooper picked Charles Perusse to be his state Budget Director. It’s a position Perusse has held before, writing budgets for Gov. Bev Perdue until early 2011. Perusse also served six years in the budget office for Gov. Mike Easley.

That would be former Democrat Governor Mike Easley, as in, convicted felon for campaign finance violation, and a revoked law license.

That would also be the former Governor Bev Perdue, of multiple scandals (including one sexual harassment scandal within the state Democrat party), and who felt the best way to fix a failing state, with massive unemployment would be to jack up taxes to near-unsustainable levels.

Yeah. Nothing says, “We won” like rushing back to employ the same people who oversaw nothing but failure, in the past.

The healthy surplus Pat McCrory and the General Assembly helped build, after pulling the state up from the bottom must look like Candy Land to those guys.

I don’t blame Democrats for being Democrats.

I do hold Republicans responsible for their cowardice in allowing this to reclaim power at the top in Raleigh.