Today, a pro-Confederate flag group in South Carolina ran an ad praising Mike Huckabee's positive attitude toward the Confederate flag. South Carolina has a lot of neo-Confederate groups and the ad will probably be marginally helpful to Huckabee in the state.
I wouldn't be surprised if the ad were not marginally helpful to Obama as well. Hey! Denouncing the Confederate flag could be a pandering opportunity for both Obama and Hillary. A noble pandering opportunity if there ever was one.
Let's see, Huckabee's come out against evolution, against gay rights, for a Biblically-based Constitution, and for the Confederate flag. Next, he'll probably be saying that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were mistakes.
Which brings me to my point.
Huckabee's campaign is shaping up in a way that would make him the third Confederate president if he were elected. Of course, the first Confederate president was Jefferson Davis and he presided over the loss of the Civil War and the destuction of Confederate institutions.
But Trent Lott hasn't been the only politician channeling Jefferson Davis and the spirit of the Confederacy into contemporary American political institutions.
The second Confederate president is obviously George Bush, whose juvenile focus on proving his manhood, insistence on favoring his "gut" over evidence and expertise, and crackpot visions of establishing global empire recall many of the worst faults of white Southerners during the Confederate period.
Fortunately, it looks like Bush won't be quite as successful in destroying American political institutions as he was in bankrupting his oil businesses.
But the Confederacy now appears to live on in the person of Mike Huckabee. If Huckabee emerges as the favorite son candidate for the Old Confederacy and the Bible Belt, he'll be conducting another major Confederate campaign for the presidency. If he wins, he'll be the third Confederate president overall and second in the White House.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
I was poised to ask you if Huckabee's impending collapse would lead you to acknowledge the failure of these positions and rethink your stereotyping southerners and Republicans as ignorant, Bible-thumping racists, but then you dropped this little turdlet:
"(Bush's) crackpot visions of establishing global empire recall many of the worst faults of white Southerners during the Confederate period."
Even granting that Bush wants to establish a global empire, which is a fairly incredible given that colonialism was rejected as a profitable venture about a century ago, the idea that the Confederacy was motivated by imperialism is insane.
B Moe
Actually, it's pretty well known that the Confederates had a vision of expanding southward into Mexico and Central America.
Here's a couple of url's that address the issue.
Confederate ideas of expanding into Northern Mexico: http://members.tripod.com/~azrebel/page11.html
Prospects for Confederate expansion:
http://books.google.com/books?id=jyrSYPMuzV0C&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=confederacy+expansion+to+mexico&source=web&ots=TADMMMhBH3&sig=74s5As2O3tnqW4eRlnI9jxPXyTM
Amy Greenburg's Manifest Manhood also addresses the issue of the "filibuster" invasions of Cuba and Nicaragua that generated out o the South in the 1850's.
Also, I'm not convinced that Huck's campaign is going to collapse.
A bit of correction. I certainly don't think of all Republicans as racists. John McCain would be a good example of a Republican politician who doesn't indulge in race-baiting as a way to get votes.
However, racism is endemic to the conservative movement that dominates the Republican Party. Racism is also a part of what's going on at your home blog Protein Wisdom. The racism might not be as big as misogyny and homophobia at Protein Wisdom, but it's still there.
I will at the moment ignore that you don't seem to grasp the definition of the word empire, and simply ask how the confederate plans for expansion into disputed territories at the time was any different than any of the other political actors in North and Central America at the time? The Northern states invaded the Southern to start the conflict, remember, and the northern border of what would become Mexico had been contested since the Spanish occupation. Why do you regard the expansion of your own territory a peculiarly Confederate phenomenon?
B Moe
Post a Comment