Posted on 12/23/2010 2:54:34 PM PST by Kaslin
The Mississippi governor's strangely muted recall of the nature of the Citizens Council in his hometown disqualifies him from seeking the presidency.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour may run for president in 2012. If I were his wife, I would put every ounce of my marital capital on the line in my fight to stop him. Governor Barbour would be, in my opinion, attempting a swim upstream, against ghastly, frigid currents, towards a bridge beyond too far.
The reasons why this is so ought to be obvious to any fifth grader with even an ounce of worldly knowledge and a tiny grain of common sense.
I sincerely doubt that Haley Barbour holds any genuinely racist beliefs. But he has made and continues to make comments – in a most Southern, Southern drawl — that have made even this native Southerner cringe. The most recent remarks by the governor were made in a formal interview with the Weekly Standard, which was published a couple of days ago. Already Governor Barbour’s questionable take on his town’s “Citizens Council” has been pilloried from coast to coast in scores of publications. In addition, past comments have been unearthed, one actually putting the words “watermelon” and “blacks” in the same sentence. Enough said.
Like Governor Barbour, I am as Southern as they come, born and bred in Atlanta a mere two generations removed from a plantation in Mississippi. I’m four years younger than Mr. Barbour, which gives me an even better excuse for being too young to have been a segregationist, much less a slaveholder or plantation mistress. But even I have strong, vivid memories of the Civil Rights movement and of the Jim Crow segregation that spawned it.
Two of the first words I learned to read as a young child were “white” and “colored.” Whether at the public park water fountains or the restrooms of any public facility, those words were emblazoned across the South in bold, stark print. Those words are still painful to me in ways that might be hard to fathom by my generational peers from other regions. And I’m white. As far as I’m concerned, one would need to have the sensibility of an orange or be born after 1970 not to feel a sharp pain in his soul over Jim Crow and the whole host of indignities to real human beings because of it.
Governor Haley Barbour, I’ve read, has been a good public servant in a state that has had grave problems, many of them stemming from Katrina devastation. He is currently the chairman of the Republican Governors Association and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. He has served ably in both positions and deserves recognition. But a run for president to unseat the first black president? Hailing from Mississippi? With a record for misconstruing the enormous shame on the soul of the old South?
Sorry, he won’t get my primary vote if he decides to run. In fact, I already question his bearings and feel the need to set a few things straight because he has so blatantly muddied the Civil Rights movement waters.
Mr. Barbour was born in 1947, too late to be held accountable for continuing to uphold a post-Civil-War era code of laws. But I’m even younger, was born in 1951, and the Civil Rights era still amounts to far, far, more than “diddly” to me. I clearly remember the tales of my grandmother’s childhood on the family plantation in Mississippi, where black tenant farmers and their children lived lives completely reminiscent of their slave ancestors. I was in at least the third grade before it dawned on me that the War Between the States had happened nearly a century before I was born, and I could finally rest easily knowing that some guy named Sherman wasn’t actually down the road a piece burning everything in sight. Our parents and grandparents spoke of that war as though it were still going on or had happened the day before yesterday.
I played with the children of my grandmother’s “colored” maid and still remember my own young soul’s recoil over “separate but equal” schools. It took neither a genius nor a saint to fully understand a systematic wrong occurring every single day right under one’s nose.
Those “Citizens Councils,” to which Governor Barbour gave such mitigating virtue in his Weekly Standard interview, were in fact the upper class version of the Klan. No, the Citizens Councils did not resort to cross-burning, lynching, threats of lynching, or even public anger to keep life as it had always been in the South — segregated.
Instead, the Citizens Councils relied on the same type of financial and public-pressure machinations regularly now employed by Democrat race-hustlers and their NGO friends in the community-organizing outfits, like ACORN. The fact that racialists of a new variety have replaced the ones of old doesn’t change the nature of the beast at all or the immorality of their actions.
But if Haley Barbour thinks for even one minute that asserting the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right mantra will save him from the consequences of his truly egregious comments on the race issue, then he needs a long vacation, not a presidential campaign.
That there is indisputably a double-standard on racial issues between Democrats and Republicans ought to be apparent to any ninny with a working set of eyes and ears. If a Republican had said of candidate Barack Obama that, of course, he was an appealing candidate as the first “articulate, clean-cut African-American” to run, that man would not now be vice president but would have been consigned to the farthest corner of social oblivion.
If a Republican had said that Barack Obama had the advantage of having no “negro dialect,” but that he could put one on any time he wanted to, that man would not still be on the White House guest list, even if he was the Senate majority leader.
If a Republican former president had said of candidate Obama that in former years he “would have been fetchin’ us coffee,” that man would not have been invited to take over a White House press conference but would never have been heard from again.
Haley Barbour may be a fine governor of Mississippi. He may be the best good ole boy lobbyist that the inside-beltway folks have ever heard spin a good yarn for his clients or constituents. And all of that may be just wonderful for the citizens of Mississippi, the Republican governors, and the whole Grand Old Party. But taking those assets onto center national stage in prime time, carrying the baggage of Jim Crow and an obviously muted understanding of its legacy in the minds and hearts of all who lived through it — both black and white alike — is a bridge beyond too far.
Only someone who habitually denies reality, in my humble opinion, could possibly think otherwise.
“The Mississippi governor’s strangely muted recall of the nature of the Citizens Council in his hometown disqualifies him from seeking the presidency. “
Baloney!
Boss Hogg is finished before he ever got started.
Run Haley Run—for Pres of the USA!!
“Boss Hogg is finished before he ever got started.”
Haley just needs to pick one or two of his black friends to be his campaign manager(s) and this whole thing will be the tempest in a teapot it is.
What’s more serious is his looking old and being overweight. I’m doubtful that he can overcome that.
I like Haley.
He should confront the prejudice against white southerners. He is not guilty by accident of birth.
Not to mention, white southerners did the best they could dealing with an intrusive federal government who acted like an occupying army.
Certainly the concerns of white southerners regarding the crime and the huge social costs of black dysfunction have been born out.
It’s sad he’s getting such a bad rap. He’s a kind, decent man that as far as I know, never showed any signs of racism.
Sometimes being southern is a curse.
Oh and yes, he does sound like he has marbles in his mouth.
Looks like the media is narrowing down the choices for Republicans in 2012....Lets see Palin is out according to them and now Barbour..So I guess the only choice is Mittens?? /sarcasm
Meanwhile, Baraq was able to attend Rev Wright’s Temple of Hate without a murmur from the MSM.
I am so damn sick of people automatically assuming that someone is a racist simply because they are white and Southern. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We have GOT to stop letting the liberals set the terms of the discussion!
Barbour should run, IMO. I’d like to hear more about him and see him at work in a crowded GOP field of candidates. And when the MSM starts throwing the “racist” card at him, he (and we) need to hit back and hit back hard.
}:-)4
Diddly!
This is a stupid commentary.
Haley has a long history in office and no racism. He ran the GOP and was successful. The racism charge is a smear job by democrats and it does not work. They do it to every non-socialist Republican. Americans are onto the race smear game espeically since the left overplayed that hand on the Tea Party.
I think the author is supporting someone else and is worried about Haley. Her advice lacks either honesty or street smarts.
That already happened so folks can say what they want now.
“Boss Hogg” is just how the fagstream media wants to tar Haley Barbour.
White, Southern (horrors!), noticeable accent, somewhat overweight, conservative and a Mississippian to boot.
Might as well add the Klan sheets, Confederate uniform, and white suit w/slouch hat.
But worst of all, Governor Barbour made the New Orleans mayor look even more like a total idiot in the Katrina aftermath. The Mississippi coast was hit harder and recovered much faster under HB’s leadership than the Chocolate City with its drowned schoolbuses, and for this he is to be held unforgiveable.
IMO, Haley Barbour would make an excellent President.
This reads like it was written by someone on the “moderate Left”, and isn’t what you’d expect from someone who writes for Pajamas Media. Having said that, at least she’s answering the fatuous idea that someone like Haley Barbour could be a serious nominee for the Republican Presidential ticket. The problem is not so much these eminently “exploitable” ‘racial issues’, it’s that he’s so low-profile most people don’t even know he’s holding any kind of current public office, let alone that he could be a standard bearer for a Party for which it’s now Do or Die.
His record may be good as Governor, but the man is really nowhere to be found as far as exposure goes, so it really mystifies me that his name shows up at all as a candidate.
Of course I could say the same about Romney, who’s probably way more unsuitable for the so-called “New” Republican Party as a standard-bearer.
But the thing that really burns my ass is too many conservatives fret about how the liberal media will spotlight the smallest warts on our candidates all the while the Democrat candidates can be as sleazy as they want to be.
They don't need to be listened to ~
The media has yet to attack the meaning or content of what he said. It seems that everyone is attacking him because he is from Mississippi.
I really doubt if MLK’s staffies really gave a hootin’ crap what he was saying on tour. They were focused on connecting with the women in the audience.
This great political traditon has survived all regimes over the last couple thousand years.....Don’t believe me? Just ask Jesse Jackson or Bill Clinton for updates.
I believe he would also, but what SP has gone through will be nothing compared to what HB will have tossed at him.
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