
Today, Human Events posted
a new interview
with "the most powerful man in Republican politics," Mississippi Gov. Haley
Barbour. In the interview, Barbour
bucked conventional wisdom and argued that the rise of the Republican Party in
the south had nothing to do with race.
The governor explained that he was raised as a Democrat before he
dropped out of college to work on Richard Nixon's campaign in 1968, and said
that his parents' generation, which was more concerned about race, "became Republicans
after their children" did.
Asked directly about Nixon's "southern strategy," Barbour was
cagey, saying, "There's no question that in the fifties and probably the
sixties there was some of that." He claimed, however, that "the people who led
the change of parties" were part of a younger generation who "went to
integrated schools" and recognized that segregation was "indefensible."
Additionally, he said that many older people wouldn't leave the Democratic
Party because "it was the party of the Civil War."
BARBOUR: There's no question that
in the fifties and probably the sixties there was some of that. At the same time, the people who led the change of parties in the South, just as I
mentioned earlier, was my generation. My
generation who went to integrated schools — I went to integrated college, um,
never thought twice about it. And it was the old Democrats who had fought
for segregation so hard. By my time,
people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn't gonna be that
way any more. So the people who really
changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from
those who fought integration. In
fact, I can never forget — I mentioned we elected these two young
congressman. We were just itching to get
a senator, and one of my friend said, "Haley, we're just a few funerals away."
You had some of the old crowd that just wasn't going to give up on the
Democratic Party because it was the party of the civil war, segregation.
Barbour's version of history is so grossly distorted that
it's tough to decide where to start. Broadly
speaking, Barbour's claim that Democrats are the ones who fought segregation is
incredibly misleading. Although it's a popular
argument among southern conservatives, particularly when they're feeling defensive about
race, the fact remains that the Civil Rights Act was passed by Democratic
majorities in Congress and signed by a Democratic president. The real division
among lawmakers was geographic — it was southern
conservatives who bitterly opposed the bill.
The Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights led some
southern Democrats, like Strom Thurmond, to flee for the GOP. In 1964, Republican presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater — who opposed the Civil Rights Act — won only five
states outside his home state of Arizona: South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi,
and Louisiana. None of them went
for the Republican four years earlier.
This deception is particularly rich coming from Barbour, who
has always worn his roots on his sleeve.
Barbour says that he was raised an "Eastland Democrat," but fails to
mention that Jim Eastland once said that "segregation is not discrimination,"
but rather "the
law of God." Barbour boasts that his generation didn't think about race
because "they went to integrated schools," but he enrolled at Ole Miss just a
few years after the first
black student at the university, James Meredith, whose enrollment led to violent
rioting and who was frequently harassed
on campus. Barbour completely glosses
over the issue of Nixon's "southern
strategy," even though he personally worked on the campaign.
Forty years later, according to Newsweek,
Barbour has a Confederate
flag signed by Jefferson Davis hanging on the wall in his office. When Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) came
under fire earlier this year for issuing a proclamation to honor Confederate
History Month without even mentioning slavery, Barbour was among the first to
defend him. "It's trying to make a big
deal out of something
that didn't matter for diddly," Barbour said.