Two things link the campaigns of Corey Stewart in Virginia (which thankfully failed) and that of Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi which will be decided tomorrow: both are neo-Confederates. In the case of Stewart, he unabashedly wore the neo-Confederate mantle. A second piece in the Washington Post that dovetails with the previous post looks at the reality of what the Republican Party has become: a party of racists and neo-Confederates. For my Republican "friends" who have used the myth of the GOP being the party of fiscal responsibility, the 2017 Trump/GOP tax bill that blew a gaping hole in the federal budget, that fig leaf has withered and is gone. It's time they either flee the GOP or admit to who and what they really are. Changing the GOP from within is no longer possible. Here are column excerpts:
The far left and far right have long been warning about neocons taking over the Republican Party. Turns out they are right. Only the “neocons” in question aren’t the neoconservatives — a small group of intellectuals, in whose ranks I have often been included, who have espoused a values-based foreign policy and a centrist domestic policy. Many of us have left the GOP in disgust over the rise of Trumpism. The neocons who are now in the ascendancy are the neo-Confederates who have been encouraged to come into the open by President Trump’s unabashed appeals to racist and xenophobic prejudices.
A defining moment in the Trump presidency was the violent rally by tiki-torch-carrying white supremacists in August 2017 to protest plans to take down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Three people died, but rather than condemn far-right terrorism, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides,” and he actually sided with the white nationalists in their desire to keep intact the “beautiful statues and monuments” honoring the Confederacy.
It is no surprise, then, that Trump will be in Mississippi on Monday to campaign for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in her Nov. 27 runoff election against Democratic challenger Mike Espy. Trump calls her “an outstanding person who is strong on the Border, Crime, Military, our great Vets, Healthcare & the 2nd [Amendment].” She also has strong ideas about the War Between the States . . . .
Hyde-Smith’s attachment to the Confederacy makes sense, given her upbringing. The Jackson Free Press reports that she attended a private, all-white “segregation academy” created so white parents would not have to send their students to school with African Americans. A photograph in a 1975 high school yearbook shows her as a cheerleader next to the school mascot, who is dressed as a Confederate general and waving a Confederate battle flag. Hyde-Smith sent her own daughter to another “seg academy.”
In 2014, Hyde-Smith was photographed posing with a Confederate hat and a rifle at the Jefferson Davis homestead in Biloxi. “Mississippi history at its best,” she enthused on Facebook. And just this year, she appeared to joke in a state still scarred by its history of lynching that she would be in the “front row” of a “public hanging” if invited to do so by a supporter.
Hyde-Smith is a neo-Confederate troglodyte and a former Democrat who now feels right at home in the Trump Party. She is hardly alone. The defeated Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia, Corey A. Stewart, pals around with white supremacists, defends the Old Dominion as the state of “Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson” and says the Confederate flag “is our heritage, it’s what makes us Virginia, and if you take that away, we lose our identity.” This self-described “proud Southerner” was born and raised in Minnesota, suggesting that his reverence for the Confederacy is rooted in hatred, not “heritage.”
The same can be said of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the most openly white-supremacist member of Congress. He used to display a Confederate battle flag on his desk, even though 13,000 Iowans died while fighting for the Union.
While few Republicans are as flagrant in supporting white supremacy as King, many others dog-whistle to the same constituency. Gov. Kay Ivey was just elected in Alabama after running a commercial in which she bragged of standing up to “special interests” and people “up in Washington” who want to take down Confederate monuments. She also attacked “out-of-state liberals” for messing with the state’s heritage, echoing segregationist Gov. George Wallace’s 1960s-era complaints about “outside agitators.”
It is hard to remember that Republicans were once the Party of Lincoln. But in the 1960s they sold out their birthright to court Southern voters smarting over desegregation. . . . . with his pandering to white grievances, Trump has abetted the rise of the neo-Confederates.
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