Huckabee Embraces Confederate Flag To Woo White Evangelicals

Columbia, S. Car. -- 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.

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. ... 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," he declared to applause at a campaign rally in Myrtle Beach Thursday.

At the same time, an Atlanta, Georgia, based organization, Americans for the Preservation of American Culture, began running radio ads attacking John McCain for his opposition to displays of the Confederate flag on public buildings and praising Huckabee.

"McCain has been doing it -- calling the flag a racist symbol -- for years," the announcer declares. "After McCain, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee stands as a breath of fresh air. Governor Huckabee understands that all the average guy with a Confederate flag on his pickup truck is saying is, he's proud to be a Southerner." The ad concludes: "In South Carolina, we're proud to be Southerners."

The addition of a powerful, racially-freighted issue into the Republican primary contest appears designed to enlarge the constituency of voters supporting Huckabee, expanding the circle of white conservative Christians to include descendants of George W. Wallace's campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s - a constituency that has shown the potential to become influential in southern elections, as David Duke demonstrated by nearly winning the governorship of Louisiana in 1991.

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."

Debates over flying the Confederate flag above southern statehouses and other government buildings have been bitter and intense in recent years across the states of the former Confederacy, including here in South Carolina. Opposition to flying the Confederate flag has resulted in defeats for both Democrats and Republicans.

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Huckabee, ironically, has been campaigning throughout the state accompanied by former Republican Governor David Beasley, a conservative white evangelical who lost a 1998 bid for re-election after he called for the removal of the flag from the South Carolina statehouse. During that campaign, cars across the state displayed a bumper sticker declaring "Keep the flag, dump Beasley!"

In next-door Georgia, former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who had appeared to be unbeatable with high popularity ratings, lost a 2002 bid for re-election after replacing the state flag, which prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem, with a flag that reduced the flag emblem to a barely visible icon. Sonny Purdue, Barnes' successful Republican opponent, issued campaign brochures declaring, "Remember who changed your flag."

Furman political scientist James Guth said he was initially surprised Huckabee played the Confederate flag card, noting that it was out of character for his campaign. Guth said he believes Huckabee did so to try to stop Fred Thompson from making further gains here. Thompson remains far behind, but he has picked up roughly 7 or 8 points in recent weeks, and almost all the points Thompson acquired have been at Huckabee's expense, polls show.

The result of these trends is that in less than two weeks, Huckabee has dropped from first to second, with John McCain at the top of the polls.

Ron Wilson, past commander of the South Carolina Sons of the Confederacy, said he organized the fundraising to pay for the anti-McCain, pro-Huckabee radio ads. He said that the ads will run on every station that carries Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, plus all drive-time shows throughout the state.

Comments

[betty99]

They elected leaders who codified into law segregation, they supported the law. In some cases they took it into their own hands when they felt it wasn't draconian enough.


-----signature-----
I am a beautiful white girl with perfect sexy stature. I am eager for a good man.
All can view my crazy hot photos at blackwhitekiss.com by searching "xhot".

[KarenZipdrive]

Why are Republicans so fixated on sticking things up their asses?
Between male hooker/Whitehouse press corps member Jeff Gannon, that Florida jerk Mark Foley trying to screw teenage pages, Larry Craig's tea room trolling and now Huckabee talking about poles up the ass, it's a wonder they get any work done.
Oh well, better latent than never I guess.

[bushmocker]

He's just preaching tolerance,KKK are people too.

[fieldshellen]

It was really the "War for Southern Secession", otherwise known here in the south as "The War of Nothern Aggression" Stars and Bars Forever!!!!! P.S. I love black people as much as white ones, so hold the rascist comments, please.....


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I am a beautiful white girl with perfect sexy stature. I am eager for a good man.
All can view my crazy hot photos at interracialloving. com by searching "xhot".
Whether black or white, rich or not.

[thatsitfortheotherone]

Shocking.

To Misquote the world's favorite SecState, "No one could have imagined him using the Confederate flag as a racist weapon."

[supergranny]

This crazed self-righteous dunce has got to be the GOP's biggest nightmare. They can't keep recycling gay bashing, save the babies, and NASCAR brain dead voters. But, then again he's way behind the times, he thinks its 1999.

[Skepticat]

Last time I checked the State Flag of South Carolina was still dark blue with a white crescent moon and white palmetto palm tree - as per the SC regimental flag in the American Revolution designed by Col Moultrie.
The palmetto tree was added to memorialize the defence of Sullivan's Island fort - made of palmetto logs against the British navy June 28, 1776.

[Pete Ross]

What a f***ing moron!

[Checquoline]

So does this mean he wants Arkansas to succeed from the union? Because if he does I think that is a good idea.

[Tankan]

I guess those good ole boys don't know a carpetbagger when they see one!

Huck has played them for suckers, Old Glory to him is a merely a stepping stone!

[GoodwithWood]

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
Adolf Hitler

[BPCentrisAmerican]

The difference is that the German’s, aside from a few neo-nazis, have come to grips with their history, much more than the Japanese or even us. I worked for a German company for 4 years I have met many Germans, one in particular was an exchange student in my department and we got to know him very well, he told me that while in grade school they were required to take a field trip to one of the few concentration camps preserved, as a place to remember the evil of the Nazis. He told me that Germans do not live in denial of their past.

In contrast I have a friend born and raised in NC and has lived in the North East since attending Carnegie Mellon University. She is not a racist by any description, like many southerners I’ve met, she is friendly, open, fun to be around, raised as a Methodist has not seen of a church since her teens, yet very conservative. She knows little about the history of NC the state in which she grew up.

I once told her how the NE Radical Republican Majority which held the Congress after the Civil War impeached Lincoln’s VP Andrew Johnson a NC Democrat to assure the election of Grant, who’s administration was considered one of the most corrupt until now, sound familiar. She refuses to believe that the 40% of the propulation of South were slaves, 4 million out of 11 million. She did not know that 1’st Reconstruction governor of NC was a Radical Republican news paper publisher by the name of William Woods Holden, known as a scallywag, viewed former Confederate soldiers as traders and persecuted them economically and politically giving rise to the KKK which started as insurgency against his radical policies. She has been brainwashed that FDR was a Tax and Spend Liberal, yet the South benefited greatly from the New Deal, she also has little knowledge of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. She thinks Regan was the greatest president ever, a concept I do cannot comprehend.

[dalelegan]

Mike Huckabee gave a speech to a WHITE SUPREMACIST GROUP..

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_gave_speech_to_white_supremacists_0118.html

the CoCC a designated Hate Group..

Descended from the White Citizens Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South, including at Arkansas' Little Rock High School, the Council (or CofCC) has been designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In its "Statement of Principles," the CofCC declares, "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."

[Tom95134]

Huckabee is one sick son-of-a-bitch. One can only hope that if there is a God that there is also a Satan and he has a very special place in Hell for Huckabee.

Huckabee for President? Time for a revival of The Inquisition.

[KarenZipdrive]

The Confederate flag means only one thing in today's world: racism.
Huckabee's true colors are flying in South Carolina. He's just another hayseed hillbilly who thinks the separation of church and state is a condition that needs to be fixed.
We've HAD an evangelical Christian president for the last 8 years. Why the hell would we need another one?
I hope that creep wins the GOP nod.
Kucinich could kick that fat bastard's ass.