Lee Bright. "No mass murder of colored peoples is gonna stop me
from being a proud supporter of the Stars and Bars! Keep her
flyin'!"
There must have been some frantic moments in the Ted Cruz For President headquarters yesterday morning when it was announced that South Carolina Republican Lee Bright, co-chair for Cruz's campaign, compared the calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building to a "Stalinist purge." While other Republican lawmakers have instantly "evolved" on the issue, Bright is digging in his heels and refusing to back down. That glorious symbol of hate and oppression should never come down just because a man who venerated that symbol murdered nine black people in a church.
Being a pro-level Republican largely rests on one's ability to snow the public into believing that you're not a racist, bigoted, corrupt, corporate ass-kissing fool, i.e. that you're not what you really are. And since politicians take great pains these days to appear as little as possible in public, and never position themselves where they might get asked a tough or unscripted question on tape, they can generally coast by without damaging their fake public image too much. So it's always refreshing when one messes up and tells you how they really feel, and how Bright really feels is, unsurprisingly, exactly how the White Nationalist Neo-Confederate/Neo-Nazi movement that inspired Dylann Roof in the first place really feels. To them, removal of anything commemorating The War To Defend White Supremacism is just like "Stalinism." White people are thus the real victims here.
"It’s not just the flag," an outraged Bright breathlessly told Politico. "They want to take down the Confederate monuments, I’ve gotten emails from people who want to rename streets … anytime you want to basically remove the symbols of history from a state, that’s something that just is very bad … these are honorable men who fought for their homes, their home state, to disgrace them in the name of political correctness is just wrong. They’re not here to defend themselves."
Actually they were dishonorable men who fought for white supremacism. Just like Dylann Roof.
Keep digging in, Senator Not-So-Bright. Why not sponsor a cross burning next? It's part of the history of your state, too. The more you dig in, the more embarrassing this will be for the already embarrassing train wreck that is the Ted Cruz campaign.