Candidate offered to accept Klan founder's statue

Damn. I take the Peace Bike out for 4 hours, and I come home to one of the heaviest news days in months.

There's a special congressional election taking place today in Mississippi, and it turns out that Republican candidate Greg Davis (the silly clown pictured here) has some explaining to do. Davis, incidentally, has already engaged in race-baiting throughout the campaign, so this story should come as little surprise.

A new Democratic flier accuses Davis - who is mayor of the city of Southaven - of supporting the placement of Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest's statue in his town. The document says Greg Davis "wanted to honor the founder of the KKK with a statue in Southaven."

Davis's apologists claim this is untrue. But apparently, it's all true! The Memphis Commercial Appeal reported in 2005 that Davis and a mayor of a nearby town offered to accept statues of Forrest and of Jefferson Davis after civil rights leaders in Memphis opposed keeping the statues in their city. The cited article doesn't say Greg Davis would accept only one of the statues. It says "the statues" - plural - which would include the Klan founder's statue. In fact, Greg Davis himself said "the statues" - plural.

So are the Republicans going to claim the Commercial Appeal is lying now?

I know what Greg Davis's supporters are going to say. They'll accuse Davis's opponents of "political correctness" and so on and so on and so on. I know that's what conservatives will say, because I've heard them say it before. It isn't about "political correctness" though; it's about what statement a mayor wants to make. The biggest problem with the statues is that one of them honored the founder of the Klan, of all things. The Klan, for crying out loud! Why would a mayor in modern times want a sculpture in his town to honor a KKK founder? The Jefferson Davis statue is considered controversial too (as it should be), but at least Jefferson Davis didn't start the KKK.

A side note: A privately owned Nathan Bedford Forrest statue is visible along I-65 in Nashville. The exhibit is widely considered an object of ridicule, in part because it was erected to protest a zoning dispute that didn't involve Forrest in any way, and the statue resembles the goofy king with a toothy grin in the Burger King commercials. It too is controversial.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Ken Spain cried that the Democrats' flier is a "despicable move." What's a matter, bunky? The opposition won't play clean? At least the Democrats' claim about the Republican candidate is true. The Republicans fill their campaign materials with lies.

(Source: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dccc-links-davis-to-kkk-founders-statue-2008-05-13.html)