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Why then is there this need to bring up something which you know is going to agitate Southerners, who by in large, constitute the base of our party. It accomplishes nothing. In fact, the last time I know of that a Republican publically spoke against the rebel flag in the South, it ended up in the election of the first Democratic governor South Carolina in 16 years, granted, there was more to it than this, but not much more. All across the state there were "Keep the Flag, Ban Beasley" stickers, and in areas that were normally Republican strongholds, especially in the rural parts of the state, Hodges led Beasley in somewhat of a route.

When Hodges removes the flag, what happens, he gets unceremoniously dumped just like his predecessor, losing many of the same counties that elected him in the first place. I am not about to believe for a second that this same issue was inconsequential in the subsequent elections in Georgia and Mississippi. Perdue won a part of Georgia that Republicans never win in state-level elections, they just don't win it, but Perdue won it, and he did it by running on the flag. I'm not willing to say Perdue's lost the farm, because this won't bother voters in the Atlanta suburbs, however, Perdue would be amiss to believe that he's doing as well as the polls portend, cause there is going to be a backlash in southern Georgia.

And this brings us to Ronnie Musgrove, whose opponent made the flag one of his key issues in radio ads, Barbour never failed to bring up the flag, and Barbour ended up winning Mississippi. Given that Musgrove's strategy was to portray Barbour as an outsider, a strategy that almost always works in Mississippi, the fact that Musgrove made several attempts to take down the flag became an unforgivable sin in the eyes of Mississippians.

And back to Alabama, despite all the problems Folsom was having in 1994, he should not have won that election. Almost everyone who remembered the first James administration remember that he was one of the most ineffective governors in the state's history. And in 1994, Alabama was still very much a Democratic state, at every level. James still won, and I believe one of the reasons that James pulled off a victory is because fairly soon after Folsom became governor, he ordered that the rebel flag be taken down from the steeple at the capitol building.

It's just an issue that if you're smart, you do not touch. As it stands now, in one of the legislative districts in the suburbs, we have a candidate in the runoff, the rebel Veternarian. By virtue of the fact that he runs a pet clinic that is also licensed to sell Dixie Outfitters products, he earned a spot in the runoff, beating out the current president of the county school board. Now, I'm opposing his election due to some of his positions on local issues, however, I think it's highly probable that he wins the nomination, and if he does, his opponent will be a black Democrat. This issue is a hot potato in the area Republicans must steamroll in to do well nationally, and that's why these discussions, where Northerners continually assualt the veracity of the lost cause do not help things out. You're not getting any black votes by doing it, and more likely than not, you alienate white votes by doing it.