The Real Right-Wing Flag Flap
As the Carpetbagger Report details, the conservative blogosphere has its panties in a twist over word that an office used by some Obama volunteers in Texas displayed a flag featuring the likeness of Che Guevara. (As even the local Fox station notes, that office is unaffiliated with the official Obama campaign.) But lost in the right-wing goosestepatariat's comical calls for the Obama campaign to renounce Che Guevara and Fidel Castro is the actual conservative endorsement of a much more dangerous and hateful banner: the Confederate flag.
That some Obama supporter on his own initiative put up the Che banner is unfortunate as a matter of both principal and politics, as the current non-scandal shows. But what is truly disturbing is the silence over a real and ongoing flag flap. That is, leading lights of the Republican Party continue to defend the flying of the Confederate battle flag.
Take presumptive GOP John McCain. Even before he exorcised his demons in South Carolina last month, McCain claimed to have sworn off pandering to Republican primary voters. Back in April 2000, McCain admitted his flirtation with the Confederate flag-waving crowd in South Carolina was unprincipled - and a mistake:
"I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So, I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth."
In January, McCain repeated to Katie Couric of CBS News that his dishonesty over the Confederate flag 8 years ago was the exception to his supposed Straight Talk rule:
"I knew it was a symbol that was offensive to so many people. And afterwards, I went back and apologized. But it was needless to say, by saying that I wouldn't have anything to do with an issue like that was an act of cowardice."
Sadly for McCain, that kind of talk doesn't endear him to the reactionary right antebellum base of the Republican Party that frequents events such as last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Which is where the support of former Virginia Senator George Allen comes in handy. Introducing McCain to the unfriendly crowd at CPAC, Allen gave his endorsement to the Arizona Senator, exhorting the crowd, "Patriots, We are at war!"
Of course, Allen didn't mention which war he is still fighting. As I first noted back in December 2005 ("Confederacy of Dunces"), George Allen has been a Confederate flag waving romantic with a deep fixation for the antebellum South throughout his public career:
Allen, who in 2005 co-sponsored a resolution apologizing for the Senate's past use of the filibuster against anti-lynching legislation in the 1920's, displayed a Confederate flag and a noose at his home. While governor of Virginia, Allen declared "Confederate Heritage Month" and branded the NAACP an "extremist group."
In April 2006, Ryan Lizza of the New Republic ("George Allen's Race Problem") provided a devastating portrait of Allen's love affair with Confederate symbols dating to his youth. Before Allen donned his cowboy boots as an "authentic" Virginia Senator, as a Southern California teenager he sported a Confederate flag lapel, "plastered the school with Confederate flags," and may well have painted racist graffiti. As Lizza details, Malibu George Allen became a Dixie lover by choice, suggesting some deep-seated need to express a rebellious identity at best or perhaps some much more profound social pathology at worst. At the end of the day, Allen's delicious "Macaca Moment" was just a matter of when, not if.
Which brings us to Mike Huckabee. Pandering to Palmetto State fans of the Confederacy, the born-again Huckabee took a shot at McCain for his born-again position on the Confederate flag flying at the state capitol. the former Arkansas Governor and Baptist minister used a surprising scatological reference in making his unsurprising appeal to the neo-Confederate crowd:
"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do."
As the Carpetbagger rightly concludes of the Che banner affair, "as scandals go, this one barely passes the yawn test." But as the likes of Red State ("Texas Communists For Obama ") and Little Green Footballs ("Obama campaign workers apparently idealize a terrorist mass murderer") show, that won't stop the Republicans' amen corner online from working itself into a frenzy. Meanwhile, as a misguided Obama enthusiast removes his silly banner from an office wall, leading figures of the Republican Party will continue to hold the Confederate flag high.
UPDATE: At the White House today, President Bush celebrated African-American History Month by decrying the symbol of the noose, and its "central part in a campaign of violence and fear against African Americans." As for the Confederate flag, on that topic the President was predictably silent.
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What ever happened to "wide stance?"
Posted by Pete on February 12, 2008 2:16 PM