NY Times:
What began as scattered calls for removing the Confederate battle flag from a single state Capitol intensified with striking speed and scope on Tuesday into an emotional, nationwide movement to strip symbols of the Confederacy from public parks and buildings, license plates, Internet shopping sites and retail stores.
NY Times, and read this!:
It has been quite a few years since the lost cause has appeared quite as lost as it did Tuesday. As the afternoon drew on and their retreat turned into a rout, the lingering upholders of the Confederacy watched as license plates, statues and prominently placed Confederate battle flags slipped from their reach.
“This is the beginning of communism,” said Robert Lampley, who was standing in the blazing sun in front of the South Carolina State House shortly after the legislature voted overwhelmingly to debate the current placement of the Confederate battle flag. “The South is the last bastion of liberty and independence. I know we’re going to lose eventually.”
“Our people are dying off,” he went on, before encouraging a white reporter to “keep reproducing.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates:
This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.” If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.
Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.
This examination should begin in South Carolina, the site of our present and past catastrophe. South Carolina was the first state to secede, two months after the election of Abraham Lincoln. It was in South Carolina that the Civil War began, when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. The state’s casus belli was neither vague nor hard to comprehend:
...A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
In citing slavery, South Carolina was less an outlier than a leader, setting the tone for other states...
Read of the day, that there.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Ron Fournier:
Read Coates's entire essay here. Then reread and share it before considering my more prosaic approach below to the fallout from last week's slaughter at Mother Emanuel.
The martyrs: Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41; Cynthia Hurd, 54; Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Ethel Lance, 70; Susie Jackson, 87; Depayne Middleton Doctor, 49; Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74; Myra Thompson, 59.
The early adapters: Then-Georgia Gov. Zell Miller tried to remove the "Southern Cross" of the Confederate battle flag from his state's banner in 1992. He failed. "With neither warning nor fanfare," then-Gov. Jeb Bush unilaterally removed the Confederate "Stainless Banner" from the grounds of the Florida Capitol in early 2001.
The leaders: Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney tweeted Sunday, "Take down the #Confederate Flag at the SC Capitol," increasing pressure on a weak-kneed GOP presidential field. Hillary Rodham Clinton put the debate in a larger context of subtle and often unacknowledged racism. "Our problem is not all kooks and Klansmen," she said. "Let's be honest, for a lot of well-meaning open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear."
The followers: Haley and fellow Republicans called on the state legislature to remove the flag from the state Capitol grounds. "This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state," Haley said. She deserves credit for a deft response to the murders at Mother Emanuel, but it shouldn't have taken the shedding of blood to do the right thing. There are times when leaders are led—by an angry public, by outside forces, by tragedy, or, in the case of this GOP vice presidential aspirant, an unruly combination of all three.
Michael Calderone:
On Monday morning, 16 reporters at the Charleston-based Post and Courier newspaper began an ambitious assignment: Get all 170 state lawmakers to say whether they believe the Confederate flag should be removed from South Carolina's statehouse grounds.
The long-simmering flag debate gained traction after nine people were killed Wednesday night in a racially motivated shooting inside the city's Emanuel A.M.E. Church. Still, many South Carolina lawmakers -- not to mention Republican presidential hopefuls -- appeared hesitant in the days that followed to voice a strong opinion on the flag debate, presumably out of concern that their stand could have political consequences. The reporters' calls and emails, along with a real-time interactive tally of where each politician stood, likely added pressure to finally weigh in.
NY Times:
As Gov. Scott Walker prepares to announce his campaign for president next month, promising to bring what he calls “big bold leadership” to Washington, as he did in Wisconsin, he faces a cloud over that story line: Republicans back home are in revolt.
Leaders of Mr. Walker’s party, which controls the Legislature, are balking at his demands for the state’s budget. Critics say the governor’s spending blueprint is aimed more at appealing to conservatives in early-voting states like Iowa than doing what is best for Wisconsin.
Lawmakers are stymied over how to pay for road and bridge repairs without raising taxes or fees, which Mr. Walker has ruled out. The governor’s fellow Republicans rejected his proposal to borrow $1.3 billion for the roadwork, arguing that adding to the state’s debt is irresponsible.
“The governor rolled out $1.3 billion in bonding,” Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate majority leader, said in an interview. “It’s not been well received, is the best way to put it.”
Matt Yglesias:
Taking a deep dive into Scott Walker's burgeoning fundraising operation, a team of Washington Post reporters notes his biggest problem: He's a little too real for rich, socially liberal bankers who live in New York and want to elect a Republican who'll repeal Dodd-Frank and cut their taxes:
"Sometimes you can say something and people think you don’t mean it and sometimes you can say something and people think you mean it," said one Republican who has seen this tension play out. "When Barack Obama said he’s against gay marriage in 2008, people didn’t think he meant it. But when Scott says it, people think he means it. This is a very big stumbling block for him on Wall Street."
This is an excellent point, and it's probably broader than the marriage issue. Wall Street, for example, loves George W. Bush because while Bush was happy to talk up free markets when it came time to cut taxes and deregulate, he also didn't hesitate to throw all that stuff out the window when it came time to pony up hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money.