What Southern Strategy?
by KevinMay 5th, 2006
First, Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, does this:
Barbour wears a lapel pin with the U.S. and state flags and he is in a photograph on the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a neo-Confederate group accused of racist views. Barbour says he doesn’t know anything about the council. The picture was taken at a council-sponsored barbecue in July used to raise money for private academy school buses.
(and anyone who believes that Barbour and his staff knew nothing of the well known CCC is a liar or an idiot. Barbour, by the way, refused to ask the racists to take his picture down.)
Then he does this:
Gov. Haley Barbour won’t grant a posthumous pardon to a black Korean War veteran who was wrongfully convicted in segregationist Mississippi after he tried to enroll in an all-white university.
Clyde Kennard was convicted of purchasing $25 worth of chicken feed he knew to be stolen in 1960 and sentenced to seven years in prison, but the only witness against him has recanted his testimony. Kennard died in 1963, after being released early because he had intestinal cancer.
Barbour agrees Kennard was wronged but says he won’t grant a pardon, despite calls for him to clear the man’s name.
So. Appear with known racists, refuse to ask known racists to take your photo of their web site, then refuse to pardon a black man now known to be innocent. Who could Barbour possibly be trying to impress? How many national Republicans will repudiate this former chair of the Republican National Committee?
Categories: Politics |
Also from the article cited above:
“Barbour’s career-long views and actions on race have been moderate, even progressive.”
“Don’t expect a torrent of condemnation of Barbour on this issue from (Democrat) Gov. Ronnie Musgrove’s campaign. Just as Barbour and a host of other politicians continue to play political footsie with the CCC through the Black Hawk political rally in Carroll County, Musgrove has also attended the controversial rally and has also not publicly distanced himself from the CCC.”
Seems both sides believe we are still living in the 50’s.
Ted
““Barbour’s career-long views and actions on race have been moderate, even progressive.””
no, they may like to think that, but no. People who do this cannot have that lable applied to them.
“Seems both sides believe we are still living in the 50’s.”
So? If that is the case — and it was in Musgrove’s case — how does the absolve Barbour, and how does that change the fact that it was the GOP’s Southern Strategy that got us to a plce where pandering to racists is required in MS?
I’m sure it won’t bother Barbour to be criticized by a known leftist who is a known manipulator of words and who is known to label anyone he disagrees with a known racist.
BTW, most of the founders of the CCC were democrats, with the democrats’ Lester Maddox a charter member.
Fred:
BTW, most of the founders of the CCC were democrats
Yes, and they were racist bastards, irrespective of party. Kowtowing to racists is wrong, no matter who’s doing it.
For what it’s worth, Kevin’s on record complaining about Democrat Musgrove for this very same issue.
Tg: Kowtowing to racists is wrong, no matter who’s doing it.
Fred: I agree with you.
Kevin, I didn’t mean to imply that Musgrove’s duplicity absolves Barbour. I’m just pointing out that, for whatever reason, both sides are guilty. I don’t see it as a democratic or republican thing, but rather a Mississippi thing.
Ted:
That’s kind of true. I think Kevin’s point, however, is that while the Democrats were the racist party in the 1960’s (a piece of history Fred seems to take great pleasure in pointing out), and while there are still racist Democrats today (witness Musgrove), in the here-and-now, such racist tactics are more common among Republicans, and that the GOP’s frequent denial of the “Southern Strategy” rings hollow. That both parties are guilty of something does not make them equally guilty.
Fred:
I’m glad to see you agree with me. But I wish you’d be more honest about the racial history of the parties. In the 1960’s racism split the Democratic party in two, giving birth to the segregationist “Dixiecrat” party. They formed their own party because they recognized that their racist, segregationist agenda was no longer welcome in the Democratic party. After that party failed, most of the Dixiecrats were welcomed, with open arms, by the GOP. What does that say about the GOP?
Race continues to be a difficult issue in this country, and nobody’s really free from racism’s taint. But we’ll never clear those hurdles if we aren’t honest about where we find ourselves today. Both parties pander to racists in various ways, but the GOP is far more guilty of this than the Democratic Party (and no, that doesn’t excuse it when Democrats do it). The Democrats would be better off without Musgrove and Byrd, and the GOP would be better off without Barbour, Lott, etc.
t, The problem comes when liberals so loosely and quickly attach the label “racist” on anyone who has a disagreement with the prevailing liberal point of view.
Fred:
I agree that this is a problem. I just fail to see how it applies in this case. Kowtowing to a group with known ties to white supremacists is not a simple “disagreement with the prevailing liberal point of view.”
I suppose the second part about not granting a pardon is a case in point. It appears that Kevin immediately assumed that the denial was a racist move. I haven’t heard Barbour’s side of the story. It wouldn’t be the first time a witness recanted even though the one he testified against is guilty. I don’t know the situation.
The situation is, in a nutshell, that Kennard had to leave the Univ of Chicago and return to MS. With a year left to graduate, he applied to segregated Southern Mississippi, and was rejected. He applied again, and was arrest and convicted on trumped-up charges.
Barbour has acknowledged that the charges were false, and the whole incident a product of the segregated South. He hasn’t articulated why he won’t issue a pardon.
No need for Barbour to articulate anything. It’s obvious he made a pol’s calculaton: “What’s in it for me?”
The answer, of course, is that if he pardons the guy, he P.O.’s a bunch of his supporters, gaining little or nothing in the way of blacks’ votes.
Must be nice to be a mindreader. It doesn’t require any evidence.