Wow! Hide the dogs kiddies, cause all the dog-whistles out there will drive them nuts! Huckleberry makes his most overt racist appeal yet...
The populist campaign of Mike Huckabee, seeking to mobilize an insurgency of white evangelicals against the Republican establishment, took an abrupt turn today after the former Arkansas governor directly appealed to voters on the issue of race, summoning his fellow candidates to stop calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from government offices.
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The emergence of the confederate flag as an issue -- if past elections are a guide - holds the possibility of inflicting damage on McCain.
When McCain ran in South Carolina in 2000 against George W. Bush, he, like Huckabee now, said the confederate flag issue is a matter of states' rights -- a laden term in these parts -- and should not fall under federal jurisdiction. Later in 2000, after losing the nomination, McCain renounced his states' rights position, acknowledging, "I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth.... The Confederacy was "on the wrong side of American history. That, my friends, is how I personally feel about the Confederate battle flag. That is the honest answer I never gave to a fair question."
It's always amazed me a bit that after the Civil War the Union forces allowed the Confederate Flag to be flown or displayed with any "official" imprimatur like inclusion on state flags or documents. I guess there is some thought that it's a 1st Amendment thing, and certainly with individual displays it is I think, but as an "official" device, I wonder if it was banned outright for state/official use if we might have moved on from the divisions wrought by that war.
As an alternative stragery, maybe Mikey could just promise retroactive Presidential pardons to the likes of Byron De La Beckwith and his ilk. That ought to make him pretty damn popular with folks he's courting and he has extensive practice signing pardons for some rather unsavory people.
