Haley Barbour will stop saying nice things about the blatantly racist organizations. He will not, however, go so far as to full-on denounce the KKK plates.
“I don’t go around denouncing people. That’s not going to happen,” the Mississippi Governor said when he was asked to condemn the Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter in Mississippi for asking state legislators to approve a license plate honoring General Nathan Bedford Forrest, ex-Klan grand wizard.
Forrest, who is from Tennessee, not Mississippi, was a Confederate, revered by some as a military genius, but remembered by most for leading a massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, TN in 1864 and becoming the Ku Klux Klan grand wizard in Tennessee after the war.
When NAACP Mississippi president Derrick Johnson heard of the new license plate proposal he said, “Really? Wow,” and then asked Barbour to denounce the plan. “As the head of the state, he shouldn’t tap dance around the question,” Johnson said. But Barbour, who saves all his criticism for Obama, refused to denounce the plan. Johnson generously lobbed Barbour an anti-racist softball, asking him to denounce support of the KKK, and Barbour dodged it, saying simply, “I know there’s not a chance it’ll become law.”
This isn’t Barbour’s first racist flub. Last year he expressed support for the Council of Conservative Citizens, who see the States as “European only” and organized a boycott of the film “Thor” because super-fly black actor Idris Elba was cast as a Norse god—a traditionally aryan mythical deity. He later backpedaled, stating that the CCC, which was working against educational integration was “indefensible.”
Barbour is eyeing a presidential run in 2012. America may be disillusioned with Obama, but that doesn’t change the fact that we just elected a half-black president two years ago—you’d think Barbour would at least try to act like he’s not a racist.
What’s most amazing: Barbour isn’t even a Birther, unlike over half of the current GOP voting population. In some ways, he’s actually more connected to reality than his base.
[Via Politico]
