Today's 2 Minutes Of Liberal Hate: Haley Barbour Loves Racists Or Something

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...

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....

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...

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 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...

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...

Haley Barbour: 'The 'Citizens Council,' is totally indefensible, as is segregation.'
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour issues a statement about the recent Controversy: Dec. 21, 2010 GOV. BARBOUR’S STATEMENT REGARDING Weekly Standard ARTICLE “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 shoul...

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 ...

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 ...

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

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...

Race: 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...

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 ...

Haley Barbour's race blinders
Despite his just-released statement of contrition, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) has a blind spot the size of the Confederate Flag when it comes to race. I'm not saying that this son of the South is a Racist. I am saying that, for the second time this year, Barbour has displayed a stunning lack of insight, knowledge or even sensitivity to the role race played and continues to play in his own backyard. Note that I said this year. Greg Sargent yesterday pointed to some of Barbour's race missteps fr...

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...

Quote of the Day
"You're trying to paint the Governor as a Racist. And nothing could be further from the truth."—Dan Turner, spokesperson for Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Acist), who recently waxed nostalgic for the Citizens' Councils which were "the respectable face of white supremacist political Activism" preceding and during the Civil Rights Era, which Barbour recalls as a time that wasn't "that bad." So nothing is further from the truth than "Haley Barbour is a racist"? Cool! Let's think of some things that a...

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...

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...

Haley Barbour Calls Segregationist Citizens' Councils "Totally Indefensible"
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, right, accompanied by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., speaks before the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill and Offshore Drilling on response following the BP spill, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010, in Washington. (Credit: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is walking back his praise of "Citizens' Councils," segregationist groups that resisted integration through economic and political pressure. Controversy erupted following a "...

Haley Barbour Responds to Racial-Tension Criticism, Calls Segregation 'Indefensible'
Conceding that the Civil Rights movement "was a difficult and painful era for Mississippi," Gov. Haley Barbour responded Tuesday to criticism of comments he made that appeared to downplay the racial tensions of the 1960s and praise segregationist groups in his home state. The Republican's latest remarks don't quite amount to an Apology, but offer some clarification about his defense of the all-white organizations called Citizens Councils, whose actions he now says are "totally indefensible." In ...

Barbour: Citizens councils 'indefensible'
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, facing a storm of criticism, on Tuesday clarified remarks that he made about integration in a recent magazine article, saying that white Citizens Councils in the South were "totally indefensible, as is segregation." Barbour, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, was alluding to a rose-tinted recollection he had offered about the role of one such group in his hometown of Yazoo City. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Politico 44 In an inte...

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...

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...

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, ...