Burnt Orange Report

Why Barbour is Bad for Bush

By Andrew Dobbs

So let’s talk about what I think ought to be one of the biggest campaign issues against Bush next year. We have the war and his other foreign policy issues which have cost American lives and lessened the credibility of America in the world. We have the economy, which might be picking up but nonetheless has hemorrhaged 2.6 million jobs. But what is our social wedge going to be? How about racism.

Last night, former Big Tobacco lobbyist and Gingrich-era RNC chair Haley Barbour was elected governor of Mississippi. Earlier in the campaign, Barbour was in a prominently placed picture on the website for well-known hate group the Council of Conservative Citizens. It sounds like just another GOP operation, but this group goes quite a bit further out there. On their main page, just below Barbour’s picture is a link to an article entitled “In Defense of Racism” which talks about how God made some races inferior, they have an ad supporting one Ernst Zundel about whom the Anti-Defamation League says:

Since the late 1970s, Ernst Zundel has run Samisdat Publishers, one of the largest distributors of Nazi and neo-Nazi propaganda and memorabilia in the world. He is also the inspiration for and key content provider of www.zundelsite.org, since 1995 a leading online repository of Holocaust-denial propaganda. His activities have led to numerous trials in Canada and made him subject to probable arrest should he ever attempt to return to Germany.

They sell a C of CCs pamphlet with this description:

The Sixth Law of God is a book that will stun even fundamentalist Christians! Pastor V. S. Harrell has researched the oldest available Greek Septuagint texts to prove that the Commandment against adultery is a law against race mixing! Read this book and believe!

They have an article by an author named simply “Angry White Female” entitled “Walking While White” which says that minorities rape white women because they hate white people. Furthermore, the ADL weighs in on the C of CCs by saying:

The St. Louis-based Council of Conservative Citizens traces its roots directly to the racist, anti-integrationist White Citizens' Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. Its current leader, attorney Gordon Lee Baum, was an organizer for the WCC and built the Council of Conservative Citizens in part from the old group's mailing lists… Like its predecessor, the CCC inflames fears and resentments, particularly among Southern whites, with regard to black-on-white crime, nonwhite immigration, attacks on the Confederate flag and other issues related to "traditional" Southern culture. Although its leadership claims that the group is not racist, its publications, Web sites and actions all promote the purportedly innate superiority of white people and bias against nonwhites.

So this group is a nasty white supremacist organization, the GOP candidate for governor was pictured on their website, at an event they hosted. He was asked if he wanted his picture and name removed from their site, and he declined. Essentially, he attended their events, he was supported by the same group that produced the murderer of Medgar Evers and when asked if he wanted to distance himself from them he declined. Furthermore, on Election Day the New York Times reported that:

Racial issues flared… Election Day brought claims of intimidation at largely black precincts.

Haley Barbour is affiliated with hate groups, he worked to intimidate black voters, he is a racist. George W. Bush made a high-profile campaign appearance, Dick Cheney appeared at at lest one Barbour fundraiser, the entire GOP establishment stood behind their ol’ boy- Haley Barbour.

This should be a HUGE Democrat campaign issue next year. MTV, BET, UPN, every hip hop, R&B, Soul or Gospel station, every black magazine and every billboard and bus stop in black neighborhoods, everywhere young people spend time should have the message “George W. Bush spent time and money working to get a racist elected in Mississippi. George W. Bush stood by a man who is associated with a group that says that Martin Luther King was a traitor and that his holiday should not exist. Dick Cheney raised money for a man that scared elderly black men and women away from the polls. Thought Jim Crow went away in the 60s? Think Again.” If we can put Bush on the defense on this issue it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Not only will it spur higher black turnout, it’ll mean less support from moderate whites and independents in the northern suburbs and more educated households- two of the largest constituencies out there.

George Bush chose to support a man who stands with those who have supported lynching, who represent the worst parts of our country and it is time the country knew about it so they could do something about it.