“I don’t personally display it anywhere, so it’s not an issue for me,” Huckabee repeated. “That’s an issue for the people of South Carolina. Do you display it? I doubt it. Does anyone on your panel display it? I doubt it. For us, it’s not an issue.”
The issue at hand doesn’t have to do with personal choice, so Huckabee’s response here is a red herring–and, I see now, a shift away from states’-rights rhetoric to make the matter a personal or local one It does have to do, though, with speech sanctioned by the state, one of 50 of which Hucakbee hopes to become the President. One would hope that the individual states and their laws–in both letter and spirit–embody the high ideals we have set for ourselves at the national level. As other commenters here have pointed out, though, the Confederate flag became a state-adopted symbol of resistance to federal civil rights laws. It seems to me that this would be an issue for any citizen, let alone someone who wants to hold an office in which he would be representing the interests of all citizens.