Discussion for article #237757
I think Brian Beutler nailed at over at the New Republic today
She is just providing cover for the GOP field on this. Now they can slowly start crawling out of their hiding positions and support the removal of the flag. Thus, here comes Paul scurrying out of his hidey hole, and Walker finally making a twitter statement. Bush and Rubio will be next (its been interesting to watch Rubio say he supported Bush’s unilateral removal of the flag while governor…considering he supported and voted for a bill to PREVENT Bush from doing just that), and then rest of the clown train will follow suit.
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And it only took 9 more deaths to finally open their eyes to the writing on the wall.
Anyone have a number on how many women have to die in back alley abortion butcher shops before they’ll leave them in peace?
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Ah, but can economic conservatism win elections without whistling in the racist dogs? We’ll see, but the Republicans haven’t run that play in over 30 years.
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The Republican brand is so connected with hatred, misogyny, violence and racism that every time another red state caves on hatred the Republican brand takes another hit. It does not “look” like the Republicans have come to their senses, it LOOKS(and is) that overwhelming majorities are now against what they stand for. SC hasn’t become less racist, they have heard the ch-ching of business threatening to boycott them.
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They are also talking about the flag - so they don’t have to address the gun issue or the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
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It’s always about business and money with the GOP, not human decency. They are happy to cater to the ignorant bigoted wing of their party until it becomes inconvenient for commerce, just like with the anti-gay “religious freedom” laws. Only question is if the racist right-wing underclass will figure out their GOP only cares about corporations and billionaires and they’ve been voting against their own economic interests for decades.
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Nikki Haley identified herself as white in 2001 on her voter registration form: Indian Nikki Haley Says She Is White – Mother Jones
The South has thrived on poor wages since slavery ended. Whatever the industry, if its done in the South, it’s done for less. The poor white trash mostly fought and died in Civil War to protect the rights of the rich to own and exploit slaves. There was the “twenty negro rule” that exempted wealthy plantation owners and other rich from military service during the Civil War.
Terms like “redneck” and “white trash” were first used in the 19th century by upper-class whites to classify their poorer cousins. They are essentially the product of the ideology of white supremacy. If, as Southern slave owners argued to justify the enslavement of Africans, whites were a superior race, then those whites who did not exhibit “superior” qualities had to be identified and taken down a notch. In other words, poor, rural, uneducated whites were deemed something less than fully white.
The poor white sharecroppers, tenant farmers, were being exploited by the wealthy in greater numbers than the blacks in the South. Many blacks said the hell with it and left for work in the North.
If the Southern working class and the rednecks ever caught on that they are being still being exploited by the wealthy with “right to work” laws and union busting, they may look at their “heritage” differently. Alas, in over a hundred and fifty years they have never caught on they were used to fight and die for wealthy slave owners rights while most of them could never afford to own a slave. So, I doubt they would ever catch on to what is now going on, and how they are being used again. Lyndon B Johnson said summed up the wealthy Southern ideology pretty well:
If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.
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Lets measure how African-Americans are doing in S.C. with regards to education and employment. Confederate flags don’t mean a damn thing to most racists. Its just window dressing.
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Right. The GOP leaders are sincerely hoping that the harassment of blacks (leading to injury and sometimes death) and the country being awash with guns will be overlooked as we all celebrate the removal of a hated symbol. It might work.
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Spot on! Working class Whites in the South have been screwed by the GOP for so long they think its someone else’s fault. They can’t see that being pimped by Walmart is bad thing as long as they will sell guns to them.
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Nailed it 
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Wrong analogy. The anti-choice group might make such a concession if it involved only lowering a flag, rather than fundamentally changing their view of women.
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So now it is a sign of GOP moderation that some now support removal of a 5- decades long symbol of black oppression, lynchings and church bombings? The GOP is embarrassed, not moved to fundamentally change its appeal to the basest racist instincts among South Carolinians.
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Well done article. Thank you for this DJ. My favorite quote from it:
“It shouldn’t have taken Dylann Storm Roof’s heinous crime to make Republicans come to terms with the wrongness of the display on the State Capitol grounds, and it shouldn’t be the case that a mass-murdering segregationist has a clearer grasp of the Confederate flag’s meaning than the governor of South Carolina.”
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It is NOT a good sign for the GOP no matter what smoke screen of “evolving” they try to put on it. The party of hatred, misogyny, and racists is acknowledging they have lost again. Republicans better hold their noses, they are going under.
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not exactly a great profile in courage
And still a vast playing field left for the union-free, alleged job creator, democracy thwarters…
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That is the essence of the Southern Strategy. It’s not, like many say when discussing why people vote against their own best interest, because they believe they have a chance of being in the top 1%…its because as long as their is someone else worse off than they are…live is bearable for them.
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This sordid admiration and worship of the confederate flag demonstrates how out-of-date, intolerant and intellectually empty the underpinnings of modern conservatism really are.
Many of the economic assumptions of conservative economics like tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, dismantling of market oversight and their resultant policy prescriptions have led to great recessions, massive fraud, vulture capitalists and robber barons, market crashes and income inequality. The underlying assumptions of conservative economics are not just flawed but plain wrong.
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As we found out in a lengthy TPM discussion on Sunday, calling for the flag to come down and actually getting it down are not the same thing.