Republicans tried virtually everything to steal the governor's election in North Carolina.

They used Kris Kobach's Interstate Crosscheck system to throw hundreds of thousands of people off the voter rolls.

They passed the harshest voter suppression ID law in the nation.

They closed polling places.

They cut early voting.

They banned same-day registration.

They even flirted with a plan to allege mass voter fraud and thus get the state legislature to overturn the results of the election and put Pat McCrory back in the governor's mansions.

Fortunately for North Carolinians, all of those election-rigging schemes failed.

On December 5, almost a month after the election Republican Pat McCrory finally conceded to his Democratic challenger, Attorney General Roy Cooper.

That should have been the end of it, but North Carolina Republicans, who have to be the most insidious Republican Party in the entire country, weren't done yet.

On Wednesday, just about half an hour after it finished up a special session called to pass a hurricane relief bill, the Republican-controlled North Carolina state legislature called for ANOTHER special session.

The purpose of this second special session was pretty clear once it got started.

One after another - legislators put forward a series of bills - all aimed at weakening the power of incoming Democratic governor Roy Cooper before he takes office on January 1.

As NPR reports-

"The proposed laws strip the incoming governor of powers his predecessor held, including the power to appoint his Cabinet without legislative approval, the power to appoint trustees for the University of North Carolina and the power to oversee the state's election board."

The North Carolina legislature is debating all these measures as I speak behind closed doors and out of the view of the press and the public.

This is for all intents and purposes a legislative coup - and it raises the question: why DO Republicans have such a hard time accepting reality when they lose elections fair and square?

Is that because they only know how to win by cheating?