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

[JFaye]

What a revelation! Had I not listened to the words from Huckabee's mouth with my ears, my skepticism of what the media reports and how, would have rendered such a declaration implausible.

Fortunately, our citizens are hearing his "HEART" now before being completely duped. The politics of "Ooops" is obviously common with politicians from Arkansas. First Bill and Hillary with great precision, calculation, and purposefulness opened the door to polarization with the Democratic Party by invoking race in the process: Only to intensify their efforts with a defense of "it's not fair" and blaming others (including the press) whilst cornering Senator Obama into being the "black candidate" all to diminish his message of hope and change to our great and needy country.

Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee. To the former Baptist preacher Huckabee's chagrin, he sanctifies the evangelicals and racists as the most likely group to give him a victory. What does it say about the people of South Carolina, this Bible belt state, if they accept such a horrific edict from this preacher man who dares to become president?

A post script, if I may: How do we continue to justify our occupation of Iraq and bombastic attempts to create a homogenous group of religious sects throughout the Arab world in view of hardwired intolerance in the USA?

[willfarnaby]

The ad concludes: "In South Carolina, we're proud to be Southerners."

Germany, 70 years ago... "In Germany, we're proud to be Nazis."

[syllepsis]

The GOP requires all its candidates to swear a "loyalty oath" to the Confederate flag.
Patriotism is treason. War is an excuse to go shopping.
It's mo(u)rning in America again.

[Y2KCockroach]

I expect that "Americans for the Preservation of American Culture" are the same deep thinkers who hang "truck nuts" off the back of their pickups. That to me is the "average (white) guy with a Confederate flag on his pickup truck". And as a "Northerner", I sh*t on all you crackers, and thank Gawd that my ancestors had the good sense to get the f*ck out of that sorry-assed corner of the planet. Y'all keep your flag, your bigotry, and your ten year-old wives, and just stay in that little "state's rights" cess-pool that you call home; after all, you are Huckabee's best argument against the theory of evolution.

[willfarnaby]

Is their an unwritten rule that every Good Republican must be an animal torturer, or have one in their family?

Speaking of which, how 'bout that Presnit BuSSh? What a man! (Or, at least, what a creature!) _He's_ not one to let a stupid, atrophied appendage like the American Legal System to stand in His way!

If all those useless - no, make that downright irritating - endangered, mammalian marine species get their brains blown up by Navy Sonar, well fuck them! And when a judge got in His way on that, fuck the judge! Hell, Presnit BuSSh is a past master at blowing up animals!

And, as with everything else about Presnit BuSSh, he now exercises his malignance on a much grander scale.

[willfarnaby]

"Citizens", even though Presnit BuSSh will soon follow the lead of all those predecessors of his that fled to Paraguay at the end of WW II...

You still must work (like "Boxer") for the Republican Party that made America what it is today...

Yes, "citizens", work for "your" Republican Party... TED BUNDY and JOHN WAYNE GACY did !!!

[BWonka]

Huckabee is a pathetic whore - willing to say or do what ever he must to get unthinking morons to vote for him.

What is there with this sad group of Rethuglican clowns? They all (especially the Huck and Romney) seem to be doing their utmost to continue to devide Americans. These are NOT consensus builders. Especially the Huck who bases everything on HIS interpretations of "God's word".

Small wonder that the VAST majority of Americans see the GOP as having been taken over by small minded bigots, homophobes and general haters. Kiss the elephant goodbye -

[totallyclips]

Can omniscient God, who
Knows the future, find
The omnipotence to
Change His future mind?

Other than that I have no strong feelings either way

[ajax2]

God he's good. Huckabee stroking the core Republicans.

[amanda85]

"If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole."

Classy...
And this guy is a Baptist minister?

[finngov]

Last time I checked The Confederacy lost the Civil War. That flag is a representation of 11 states that spit on the American flag and broke away from The Republic. A complete betrayal of the American system is what that flag represents. When the Nazi's lost WWII that flag was shelved forever for what it represented. It's illegal to even display it Germany today. Displaying the Confederate flag is the same as displaying a swastika on a German flag. And don't give me that bullcrap that it's heritage...it's a hateful, racist, disgusting heritage of slavery. The Confederate flag should be a hated symbol of a past that the Southern states should be ashamed of, not proud. Seig Heil Huck!

[dartagnan]

"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."

Bullshit. How many black Southerners do you see driving around with Confederate flags on their pickups?

The display of the Confederate flag sends a clear and unambiguous message: "I'm a white racist redneck and proud of it!"

[dartagnan]

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag."

Excuse me, I thought their flag was the AMERICAN flag. Guess I was wrong.

Lincoln made a huge mistake by fighting a war to keep those inbred imbeciles in the Union. If he had just let the South go, 500,000 lives would have been spared and the civilized areas of the nation would not have been shackled politically to that backward and benighted region.

[UNCLEJOE]

The Civil War was about States' Rights. It was provoked by the Northern Merchants who placed heavy tariffs on imported goods to force southern plantation owners to pay inflated prices fro northern merchants needed for the Southern economy to survive.

Lincoln was a blatant admitted racist who used the slave issue for political strategy which not only destroyed the southern economy to enrich the northern merchants, but caused the unnecessary suffering and deaths of untold slaves by turning them lose with no government assistance to readjust to a free life without homes or jobs or sustenance.

It is a tragic ironic how the children of former slaves, honor that father of the Republican Party, Lincoln by hanging pictures of the admitted Racist on the walls of their homes. History is always revised by the victors of war.

If the Civil War were really about freeing the slaves the Federal Union could have purchased the slaves' freedom for one percent of the cost of the Civil War. Southern Confederate soldiers died to maintain their constitutional 'States Rights'. they were the true HEROS of the Civil War, and Lincoln was just another George Bush serving the rich merchants that got him elected.

The Confederate Flag deserves, merits beyond a doubt to fly equally along side the Union Flag. We must try to heal that wound once and for all. And respecting the Confederate flag equally with the Union Flag is in the right direction, and as a Connecticut Liberal Democrat, I wholly support this goal to honor the`Confederate Flag.

Bravo Huckabee for supporting the Confederate Flag. And I am a core Democrate until 2008 depending who the DLC manipulates as the 2008 candidate agrees with you on that issue.

[scapegoat4rent]

Huckleberry was right, he did not evolved from the apes... he evolved from the dingbats instead.