RALEIGH – As members of the North Carolina Senate debate their version of a 2011-13 budget, liberals are shooting everything they’ve got against the Republican legislative majorities.

It’s not much. If Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate leader Phil Berger listen really hard, they might be hearing the occasional, faint clink of a slow-moving javelin bouncing harmless off the walls of Castle Jones Street.

Denizens of the Left have been fooling themselves into believing otherwise. Every time they get a liberal editorial writer or liberal interest group to speak out against GOP budget provisions, electoral reforms, or policy initiatives, they celebrate this rather modest accomplishment. And every time a liberal polling outfit uses skewed survey questions to generate a favorable result, the Left proclaims victory.

Self-delusion is hardly a trait confined to liberals. Newt Gingrich apparently still thinks he is a viable candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, for example. But on the major issues dominating North Carolina politics at the moment – taxes, unemployment, and a voter ID bill – Gov. Beverly Perdue and her allies continue to be in a weak position.

On fiscal policy, Perdue, Democrats, and liberal activists continue to insist that GOP legislators renege on their campaign promises and re-impose most of the sales-tax hike enacted two years ago – when the governor herself had promised North Carolinians that the tax hike would be temporary.

That’s not going to happen. Furthermore, whatever political mileage the Left has derived from the issue is predicated on the notion that keeping $800 million of the sales-tax hike in place isn’t a tax increase at all, but merely an extension of most of the current tax rate.

It’s not much of an argument, in policy terms, but it may have snookered a few voters. The governor’s problem is that the freshness date of her argument is about to expire. Under current law, if the General Assembly does nothing, the 2009 sales-tax hike goes “poof” at the end of June. If Perdue vetoes the eventual GOP budget bill, it seems likely that negotiations will continue past June 30.

It would have been hard enough to convince any Republicans to vote for a sales tax “extension” before June 30. After June 30, the governor’s policy becomes, undisputedly, a tax increase. No Republicans would vote for that. Some Democrats probably wouldn’t, either.

On the economy, the Left’s problems lie both in perception and reality. When voters look for politicians to blame for rising prices or high unemployment, they tend to blame chief executives, whose names they know, rather than legislators, whose names they don’t know. If public sentiment about the economy remains as pessimistic in the fall of 2012 as it is right now, President Obama and Governor Perdue will, fairly or not, get the blame, just as President Bush and his party got most of the blame for economic woes in 2008 even though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

Furthermore, Republican legislators in Raleigh argue that their state budget and tax policies will create thousands of private-sector jobs over the next two years – far more than the number of government employees who might be laid off as government budgets contract. Again, you can disagree with their analysis if you wish, but you can’t argue that they lack a jobs policy.

Finally, Democrats and liberals have painted themselves into a corner about proposed GOP electoral reforms. When they oppose a voter ID requirement supported by sizable majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, they make themselves look like unreasonable extremists. And when they allege that proposed changes to early-voting and same-day registration policies constitute some kind of nefarious voter-suppression plot – didn’t we manage to have viable elections a few years ago without these options in place? – they make themselves look like hysterical ninnies.

For the record, I’m not convinced that reducing the number of days North Carolinians can cast an early ballot is a good idea. Perhaps any potential savings would be offset by additional costs on Election Day, as some officials say.

But I’m quite sure that if the policy change is adopted, representative government will survive.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.