“How can these governors go along with such nonsense?”
Mob mentality?
I think they are, in reality ‘Go along to Get along” Republicans. Basically, the same as the Republican governors who supported the KKK in the 1910s and 1920s. They figured that support of Woodrow Wilson’s racial policies was the road to more election success which equaled then as today, more power and more wealth.
Almost all the governors and elected officials in the south then were Democrats who also invented the KKK.