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Saturday Night Card Game (Salon.com plays the Confederate Card on Rick Perry)

Saturday Night Card Game (Salon.com plays the Confederate Card on Rick Perry)

This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

No, the topic tonight is not Sheila Jackson Lee’s comment that people are complaining about raising the debt limit only because Obama is black.   That is so obviously foolish, and comes from someone who so obviously is a fool, that it almost requires no comment.  And throwing in the mix the irony that Jackson Lee recently was sued by a staffer for disability discrimination, or that she has been described as the boss from hell, would be a cheap shots beneath the dignity of this blog.

Tonight the focus is a more pernicious play of the race card by Justin Eliot at Salon.com, Rick Perry’s Confederate Past.

Headlines matter, and Salon.com made sure to use a headline suggesting that Perry has a “confederate past” whereas the actual article makes no such showing.  There was only one allegation in the article that Perry actually belonged to a confederate organization, and that example was at the beginning of the article and apparently the justification for the headline:

A 1998 voting guide published by a leading neo-Confederate group and obtained by Salon not only endorses Perry for lieutenant governor but also describes him as “a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.” Perry’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the governor’s possible membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

It’s not clear how long Salon.com gave Perry’s office to respond before the article ran, but there was an update at the end of the article dated the day after the article ran, in which Perry’s office denied the allegations:

UPDATE 7/14/11: Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier issues this denial: “[T]he governor never joined that group nor has he ever paid any dues to it.”

At most, the article gives a handful of examples of guilt by distant association with people who endorsed him at some point in his career or included him in their publications, without any indication that Perry participated in their activities or endorsed their views.  None of the examples cited in the article come within a thousand miles of Barack Obama’s 20-year relationship with Jeremiah Wright.

Not surprisingly, Think Progress amplified Salon.com’s meme, Secessionist Group Endorsed Rick Perry in 1998, Citing Apparent Membership in Pro-Confederate Group.

This is the same type of guilt by distant association used against Rush Limbaugh, when it turned out Rush was a high school classmate of Pastor Terry Jones.

The race angle is key to Salon.com’s attack, because they are trying to smear Perry as racist without having to call him racist and without anything other than innuendo.

This is how they do it.  And if Perry gets in the presidential race, expect them to do more of it.

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Comments

Jack Burden | July 16, 2011 at 6:12 pm

Near Palin treatment. What would they do with Palin, Bachmann and Perry in the race.

Perry’s getting Alinskied…

Cowboy Curtis | July 16, 2011 at 6:41 pm

When did Sons of Confederate Veterans become a neo-Confederate organization? Last time I looked they were a historical society. Maybe the larger point is that if you are from the South and fail to denounce all of your ancestors, you’re obviously a racist. Well, unless you’re a democrat, then, hey, its all cool.

Well… the Democrats are the party of the Confederacy. Perry was once a Democrat, hence Perry was once a Confederate. True statement… Now… so what?

    Voyager in reply to Steve. | July 16, 2011 at 7:13 pm

    Yes, but you have to understand, per Democrat dogma, the Republicans are all bigots, and the Democrats are pure as the driven snow.

DINORightMarie | July 16, 2011 at 7:38 pm

And being in the KKK and using that to get elected is okay, because if your name is Robert Byrd, and you are a Democrat…..well, gee, we’ll just call that out of bounds. Never denounced this membership, either. Says he used it to get known and get elected. Except he served as a recruiter, a Kleagle, which was a rank of sorts you had to earn.

Pathetic. Also, I’m with @Cowboy. Here in Virginia, as in most southern states, you still have the Daughters of the Confederacy. Just like Daughters of the Revolution, if you can trace your family to a Civil War Confederate veteran, you can join. It is a society started to help find and bury, remember and honor, the dead and missing soldiers. Also, to maintain graves, to honor those who came home maimed, and to assist other families in need. It was outlawed during Reconstruction.

Anything related to the South, to the Civil War, is deemed raaaacist by these leftist haters. Unless you have a “D” next to your name. Which is funny…..it was Democrats in the South who started Sons of the Confederacy, and the Daughters of the Confederacy.

They despise their own history. And we allow them to re-write it, to define the terms; because the complicit press is no longer objective – if the ever were. They are tools of leftists now.

Cassandra Lite | July 16, 2011 at 7:44 pm

Bill Clinton’s mentor was William J. Fulbright, who was such an enthusiastic segregationist that he signed the Southern Manifesto (opposed integration in public accommodations–that is to say, Jim Crow). Meanwhile, Al Gore’s dad–Al senior–while not a signatory to the Southern Manifesto did vote against the ’64 Civil Rights Act. I don’t remember Salon tarring either of them with any kind of racial brush.

Guilt by really distant association. I don’t think anyone at Salon has really met a true secessionist, or takes the allegation seriously.

As a political junkie from the time I was about 12 years old I love this stuff!

The only problem I see here is that the GOP believes the liberal media who continue to say that Americans want to see civility in political ads and debates and too many of them believe it.

American is being destroyed….it’s time to take off the gloves and fight back with facts like those listed in the comments above.

Duelling pistols anyone? Metaphorically of course 🙂

No, the topic tonight is not Sheila Jackson Lee’s comment that people are complaining about raising the debt limit only because Obama is black. That is so obviously foolish, and comes from someone who so obviously is a fool, that it almost requires no comment.

Professor Jacobson’s resolute intellectual discipline is an inspiration to me.

Without Professor Jacobson’s example, I would probably have digressed to mention that a post on a major left-centric site recently described South Carolina’s Governor Nikki Haley as (R-Confederacy). (To spare that site contamination by right-wing traffic, I am not linking to it.)

I would have noted that the post links to a story that, speaking truth to power, questions whether Haley literally meant it when she said she’d personally drive people without voter ID to get it at the registry. (As all enlightened people know, a voter ID requirement is no different from Jim Crow and the KKK.)

I would have snarked that neither the post nor the story show an image of NiKKKi Haley (R-Confederacy), and that they do not mention that Haley’s ethnicity is South Asian (Punjabi). I might have used indecorous language about that omission.

Thank you, Bill, for keeping me on the straight and narrow.

    DDsModernLife in reply to gs. | July 16, 2011 at 10:21 pm

    Wow! Comments are on-point tonight.

    Regarding pocket media and “Americans want to see civility…” you’re right: that is (in the words of Harry Truman) “horse manure.” Our current President tries the same tactic saying, “[The American people] sent us here to work together. They sent us here to get things done.” I’d like to remind everyone of of the 2010 election in which P.J. O’Rourke pointed out, “this wasn’t an election so much as a restraining order.”

    It seems even Republicans have forgotten: 2010 was an historic election, in which more than 600 Democrats (state and Federal) were tossed out on their collective butts. Certainly, the media would like for us to forget…

    By the way: my G-Grandfather was a Confederate veteran. Does that make me a racist? I think not.

If you want to know who the left is really afraid of, read the articles about the Republican candidates. Although Rick Perry has not announced he is going to run, the Washington Post seems especially fixated on Governor Perry. Responses to the articles they write number in the high 800’s.

The left venom spewed about Perry ranges from the absurd, to the ridiculous, to the outright vile. But bring the lefties out, those article do.

Remember, they are not as smart as they think they are, and when they drag out the long knives and start attacking, like they did Palin, THAT is who they fear.

common tater | July 16, 2011 at 10:06 pm

Given the shallow and partisan abuse of American history in service to left-liberal political agenda these past few decades, Confederacy’s lost all nuanced meaning and become simply an epithet. Still, there’s a Swift reminder:

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

Salon.com et al. in league to dishonestly discredit Republican candidates are the confederates to worry about.

I’ve attended banquets hosted by the Sons. Though my own ancestors fought for the north, the Sons were always friendly and fine hosts. The organization exists to honor the service and sacrifice of their ancestors, just exactly like the Sons of Union Veterans.

It’s sad that just because the word “Confederate” is in the name, people jump to the conclusion that there’s something hateful there and try to use it to tar a good man. Maybe I have some of that rebel blood in me. Their sleazy behavior kind of makes me want to support him more.

Juba Doobai! | July 16, 2011 at 11:22 pm

Perry ought to give a Palin response: LSM, quit making stuff up.

General Sedgwick of the NORTH (sitting on a horse in Gettysbery) is one of my grandfathers, and General Robert E Lee was one of my grandfathers Elliotts (who fought for the North) gr and I have a letter from him to John Elliot in Muskingham Co Ohio after the Civil War…

It is nothing but distraction and division…

Just get over all this
I love them both and so does America!!!

I qualify for the DAR and the Daughters of the Confederacy…
Get over it
I am a proud Texas American. Period
Nuff said.

LukeHandCool | July 16, 2011 at 11:51 pm

Wow, you’d think odds being what they are, that not every single conservative and/or Republican seeking national office would be a racist.

Obama can spend 20 years being loyal to a man spewing hatred and we’re supposedly suspicious characters if we don’t give him an immediate and gullible benefit of the doubt with the media acting as traffic cops waving us on like we’re pathetic rubberneckers, saying, “There’s nothing to see here … keep moving.”

The passing traffic long gone and the ugly wreckage cleaned up to look like it never existed, the traffic cops suddenly become OCD, leaving no stone unturned as they point to an otherwise normal looking car and tell the onlookers they waved over to the scene that it is a horrible accident just waiting to happen.

Looking at the comments there, the most precious one I saw was: “Id rather wear a Che shirt than one with a confederate flag on it….

“One fought for the little guy, the other lynched them.”

If I were presented with that sort of choice, I’d probably go shirtless.

    DINORightMarie in reply to rdz809. | July 17, 2011 at 6:22 am

    “One fought for the little guy, the other lynched them.”

    Yeah…….right.

    The one who “fought for the little guy” was Republican.

    The other who “lynched them” was Democrat.

    Why does anyone think that leftist are smart?!?! This comment is just one example that exposes their ignorance and downright stupidity.

    Pathetic.

    retire05 in reply to rdz809. | July 17, 2011 at 10:48 am

    Said by a true moonbat moron who knows nothing of Che except the pablum put out by the leftist media. Nevermind that Che was a murdering thug that took great pleasure in blowing the brains out of teenagers who fought against him, Castro and the Communists of Russia that were funding Che.

    Maybe whoever made that statement should talk to some Cubans that have had to live under Che and Castro. At least the Bolivians removed that piece of human waste from the planet.

    Steve in reply to rdz809. | July 17, 2011 at 11:18 am

    I think I’d take the confederate flag. They were Americans, fighting under beliefs sacred to Americans and made a valiant attempt to separate themselves as the revolution did from England before them.

    Only the confusion introduced over slavery being the only reason for the war stained their cause to any degree. The English Civil War, the revolution, and the American Civil War were all started and fought because of a perceived oppression of the rights of citizens or abuse of powers of government under the Constitution (or Magna Carta).

    As far as I know Che was a would be revolutionary Communist who probably would do as Castro would later . Claim to fight for the people and then seize power and establish an iron regime in the model of Stalin.

I am a life member of Sons of Confederate Veterans. The organization is a historical organization with no racial or political goals. It is exempt under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

We put tombstones on old graves, maintain monuments, study the Civil War and honor our ancestors.

I am sick and tired of the left trying to make something racial out of it. We have black members, white members, Jewish members, Catholic members, gay members and even a Chinese person of Confederate descent. There is absolutely nothing dishonorable about membership therein.

You have to be on offense, not defense, on this stuff. We should be screaming to every question from every reporter that Obama refuses to give details of his plan, that Reid has failed to produce a budget in over two years. That Obama and Democrats had two full years with near-total control of Congress to address these issues, and they not only refused to do so, they wouldn’t include Republicans in discussions over any legislation.

… and Al Gore kept him as a supporter ?

[…] tolerant, intellectually honest journalists) have apparently uncovered damning evidence that Gov. Perry is a confederate sympathizer!!! A 1998 voting guide published by a leading neo-Confederate group and obtained by Salon not only […]

[…] tolerant, intellectually honest journalists) have apparently uncovered damning evidence that Gov. Perry is a confederate sympathizer!!! A 1998 voting guide published by a leading neo-Confederate group and obtained by Salon not only […]