Quote of the Day

Barbour's Racial Myopia.
It's a strange day at TAP when I find myself agreeing with Jim Geraghty : I stand by my earlier point that the bar for accusations of Racism has gotten dangerously low, and that Monday afternoon we saw a disturbing conveyor belt in which Barbour was compared to the worst villains of American history over a lone comment that suggests historical inaccuracy and gauzy hometown sentimentalism, not a deep-rooted hatred or a belief in one group of Americans’ inferiority. Neither inaccuracy nor oblivi...

Gov. Haley Barbour Praises White Supremacist Group
The meltdown of the Republican Party into a stinky puddle of Racist goo is accelerating. In an interview with the Weekly Standard, Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) actually praised the Civil Rights era white supremacist group known as the “White Citizens’ Council.” As Barbour recalls it in a new profile in The Weekly Standard, things weren’t so bad in his hometown of Yazoo City, which took until 1970 to integrate its schools (though the final event itself is said to have gon...

Today's 2 Minutes Of Liberal Hate: Haley Barbour Loves Racists Or Something
The Weekly Standard has a lengthy and positive profile of Mississippi Governor and possible GOP Presidential Candidate Haley Barbour. It seems some on the left, led by Matt Yglesias and followed by the usual suspects at TPM, The Atlantic and Politico, Time and MSNBC, are outrageously outraged by this passage dealing with Barbour's recollection of his hometown's integration efforts. Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that man...

Has 'racism' furore ended Haley Barbour's White House chances?
The 2012 presidential race is starting late - it looks like it will get going properly in the Spring, as opposed to January, as it did in 2008 - but that doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening already. Most of what’s going on is behind the scenes (Fundraising, wooing staff, drawing up strategies, sweet-talking party officials, gaming the press) but some of it is spilling out publicly. Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi is doubtless already wishing this week...

A note to conservative commenters | Michael Tomasky
Friends, trust me on this. You are doing yourselves no credit trying to explain Haley Barbour's comments away. I say this as your friend who is grateful for your participation in our conversation. You look ridiculous. The Citizens Councils were Racist outfits. Haley Barbour is defending them. They may not have burned crosses and bombed churches, but they did exist to support and help enforce segregation and prevent, as they would have put it, "mongrelization." Why defend this? Why defend someon...

Haley Barbour accused of praising 'racist organisation'
Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississippi and a potential Republican Presidential Candidate in 2012, has been accused of praising a Racist organisation....

Haley Barbour and the KKK in Yazoo City
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is out with a statement today walking back his friendly comments about the White Citizens Councils of the 1960s. Here it is via Politico:  When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns' integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn't tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should cons...

Barbour defends comments on race, but is the damage done to his potential 2012 bid? (The Ticket)
Could Haley Barbour's comments on race doom his potential 2012 GOP presidential run before it even starts? On Tuesday, the Mississippi Governor sought to clarify his remarks to the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson about growing up at the height of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. "I just don't remember it as being that bad," Barbour had told Ferguson, noting that his hometown, Yazoo City, Miss., wasn't at the flash point of racial tensions at the time. The Governor went on to credit ...

Blog Buzz: The Barbour backlash
Ali Weinberg writes: Bloggers on the left and right responded to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s statement today walking back his comments on the Civil Rights era. But the racial sensitivity at Barbour headquarters was suggested by an exchange between the Candidate and an aide who complained that there would be ''coons'' at a campaign stop at the State Fair. Embarrassed that a reporter heard this, Mr. Barbour warned that if the aide persisted in Racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as...

Anyone Who Praises The Pre-1947 Yankees Is Racist
1947 was the year in which the color barrier was broken in Major League Baseball. Prior to Jackie Robinson taking the field, MLB (or whatever it was called at the time) was segregated. Actually, it was more than segregated, it excluded blacks completely. Using the logic of Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, who is having his 15 minutes of Race Card fame, anyone who expresses any measure of praise for the pre-1947 Yankees necessarily would be "expressing affection for a White Supremacist" organ...

No More Mister Nice Blog
DOES THIS END BARBOUR'S PRESIDENTIAL BID? NAHHH. FAR FROM IT. In comments to my first Haley Barbour post yesterday, mb wrote: I think this will sink any (small) chance Barbour had of mounting a serious challenge for the GOP nomination. I've been inclined to believe him -- the point of my post was that the Beltway, confronted with the sort of racial insensitivity Barbour displayed, feels compelled to take it seriously, though not all that seriously. Especially in the case of an admired insider, ...

Attitudes, lifestyle in WWII Germany helped to end segregation in States
Germany lay defeated and in ruins, responsible for the recent Murder of millions and a world war. Yet it also became an unlikely haven for some Soldiers. “For black GIs, especially those out of the South, Germany was a breath of freedom,” Colin Powell, a former Secretary of State, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and America’s most famous African-American soldier, noted in his memoir. “They could go where they wanted, eat what they wanted and date whom they wanted...

No More Mister Nice Blog
HEY, IT'S NOT AS IF BARBOUR SAID ANYTHING REALLY TROUBLING, RIGHT? To judge from the Trent Lott and George Allen incidents, I assume that the press will not give Haley Barbour a pass for saying that the Civil Rights era in his Mississippi hometown was not that bad and for his praise of the undeniably Racist White Citizens Councils. But this will pass relatively quickly, and it will pass whether or not Barbour ever shows genuine contrition or evidence of soul-searching. We know this because, fou...

Beware of conservative magazines bearing cover stories
By Jennifer Rubin WashPost Haley Barbour has gotten himself in a heap of trouble. By praising White Citizens' Councils, appearing clueless about the history of racial injustice in the South, giving the Democrats a free swing at him and reviving recollections of another shockingly inappropriate racial statement, Barbour has gone a long way toward blowing up his presidential candidacy before it began. Other than the amazing propensity of seemingly sophisticated politicians to say remarkably self...

Possible 2012 presidential candidate Barbour clarifies civil rights remark
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who may seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, went into damage control mode Tuesday because of remarks he made about the 1960s Civil Rights movement in his state. A profile of Barbour in a conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, included comments from him about what life was like growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” Barbour said. The ...

Haley Barbour: Citizens councils 'indefensible' - Jonathan Martin
Any misstep he makes — anything at all that can be portrayed as insensitive — will be pounced upon by an opposition that has much to gain by painting the portrait of an unreconstructed good ol' boy. Barbour’s comments in the Standard weren’t the first time he sought to defuse a race-related question by downplaying the issue. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset It’s the approach he took in April when he was asked by CNN’s Candy Crowley about Virginia's fa...

Barbour Explains Remarks about Desegregation
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 By Charles Babington, Associated Press Washington (AP) - Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, said Tuesday he was not trying to downplay the pain that many endured during the South's segregation era when he defended his home town's 1970 Public School integration process. Barbour spoke out a day after several liberal Activists criticized his published comments about school Desegregation in Yazoo City, which occurred when he...

Barbour defends Miss. school integration account
WASHINGTON—Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, rebutted critics Monday who said he is sugar-coating his state's history of racial integration. At issue is the January 1970 integration of Public Schools in Barbour's home town of Yazoo City, when he was 20. Historical accounts confirm the schools integrated peacefully, as Barbour stated in a recent profile in the Weekly Standard magazine. Some liberal groups, however, said his comments skimmed over...

Cruising the Web
Steve Chapman bemoans the drive in schools to make all Students above average, or maybe just average. Thomas Sowell has one of his random thoughts columns. There are many nuggets of wisdom in there, but here is one that really resonates with me. "The History Channel has some very good programs when it sticks to history. But it keeps going off on tangents, with all kinds of contemporary activities and even weird speculations that are not history." I suppose that they must get good Ratings for the...

Haley Barbour Responds
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns’ integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn’t tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the "Citiz...

Barbour Doesnt Recall Civil Rights Era Being That Bad
The Hill reports: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says he doesn’t remember the Civil Rights era being “that bad,” citing his attendance at a Martin Luther King Jr. rally nearly 50 years ago. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” Barbour (R), 63, told the conservative Weekly Standard, which did a lengthy profile on the Governor. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black ...

Why this will sink Haley Barbour in 2012
There is a school of thought that Haley Barbour's comments about life in the Civil Rights-era South and Yazoo City chapter of the White Citizens Council represent some kind of cunning, premeditated political strategy -- that the Mississippi Governor, in provoking the wrath of liberal commentators, is now poised to win over sympathetic Conservatives for a potential 2012 White House bid. As the New Republic's Jonathan Chait puts it: His past is not Racist enough to disqualify him, but it is murky ...

Haley Barbour clarifies comments on civil rights era
Too late? When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns’ integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn’t tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the ‘Citizens Council,’ is totally indefensible, as is segrega

Why Haley Barbour whitewashes history
Who'd have figured that the first major blow to Haley Barbour's 2012 White House hopes would be delivered by ... the Weekly Standard? Bill Kristol's magazine is out today with a profile of the Mississippi Governor, written by Andrew Ferguson, in which Barbour downplays the upheaval of the Civil Rights movement and characterizes the notorious White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s as a force for good. Asked about coming of age in Yazoo City, Miss., during the Civil Rights "revolution...

Haley Barbour's Comments Don't Define Him
Haley Barbour’s comments about Racism are being blown up unnecessarily, just as past controversies ensnared Clinton, Kerry, and George W. Bush. Howard Kurtz on the media’s white noise....