Friday, January 18, 2008

HUCKABEE: A PROUD SON OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA


Okay folks, here is something a little different. The article which follows the introduction is from The Nation. The introduction, however, is not from me, but from One People's Project. Got it. Get it. Who needs me?


From One People's Project:


We knew it was going to happen, but it sucks that we had to be right. Even we wanted Mike Huckabee to be the nice guy he seems to be on the campaign trail. The problem with that is he is also a neo-con, and when you put neo-cons in South Carolina, where you just have to kiss the asses of neo-confederates, what is ugly about you comes out big time. Now the fact that Huckabee was the governor of a state that represents the Confederacy on it's flag should not be enough to indict the guy if it didn't indict Gov. Clinton. Remarks defending the Confederate flag - suggesting violence to do so - just before the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend - oughta do it though. Okay, so he says it's all in the spirit of not allowing others to tell South Carolina what to do. Considering we have heard that in the past not only from South Carolina but from Arkansas when they tried in vain to preserve Jim Crow, that sentiment is going to ring a little hollow. Tell ya what though, Mikey. Since you don't believe in telling South Carolina what to do, we guess that means you won't have much to say when New Jersey burns that flag, eh? This article is accompanied by a video shot in 2000 by DLJ of members of the People's Organization for Progress, NAACP, Anti-Racist Action and others burning a Confederate flag in Newark, NJ. It was burned in response to the controversy brewing at the time in South Carolina keeping the flag they hoisted in protest of the Civil Rights Bill on top of their Statehouse. It is one thing if someone as an individual wants to fly that flag, but it is quite another when it is going to represent everyone, including those who do not want to be associated with it. If Huckabee doesn't see that to be a problem, the closest he will get to the White House next year may be as a tourist.

From The Nation:


Mike Huckabee is a proud Christian fundamentalist.

But that's not the only faith the Republican presidential candidate preaches on the campaign trail.
He is, as well, a proud Confederate fundamentalist who wants there to be no doubt about his commitment to preserving the ugly symbols of slavery's defense.

Huckabee has in recent days been gleefully proposing a violent response to any "outsider" who might suggest that it is time to haul down the flag of treason that was flown by southern extremists who went to war against the United States in order to preserve the practice of human bondage.

Again and again on the campaign trail in South Carolina, the state that led the south into rebellion against the Union, Huckabee has gone out of his way to discuss and defend the "right" of southerners to fly the Confederate flag in official settings.

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," the former governor of Arkansas told a crowd in Myrtle Beach, where he was campaigning in advance of the state's Republican primary on Saturday. "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."
In Florence, he told his supporters that, "I know what would happen if somebody comes to my state in Arkansas and tells us what to do, it doesn't matter what it is, tell us how to run our schools, tell us how to raise our kids, tell us what to do with our flag -- you want to come tell us what to do with the flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole."

Exactly when are political reporters going to acknowledge that the candidate they have presented to America as a charming, good-humored "nice guy" is running a "southern-strategy" campaign so extreme in its sensibilities, themes and language that it would have embarrassed George Wallace?

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