Just how worried were top Republicans that their White House hopes were on the verge of being derailed by an unexpected flap over the Confederate flag that flies over the state house grounds in South Carolina?
There was Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Monday, standing behind Gov. Nikki Haley in Columbia as she announced that the Confederate battle flag should come down in the wake of the shooting of nine African Americans by a white supremacist as they prayed in a black church in Charleston, S.C. Also among the bipartisan groups of South Carolina political leaders that flanked Haley for the new conference: Palmetto State GOP Chairman Matt Moore.
Priebus, a northerner from Wisconsin, is the GOP’s chief national fundraiser and is in charge of the preparing the party to compete for the presidency in 2016. He rarely involves himself in issues, let alone policy specific to individual states. Priebus needs the support of grassroots activists and donors with a broad range of viewpoints and geographic reach; he can’t afford to alienate factions of the party.
But South Carolina is an early primary state that plays a regular host to the Republican presidential contenders, and questions about the flag threatened to distract from winning issues like the economy and national security, not to mention GOP attacks on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The political sand-trap was almost impossible for the Republicans to avoid, and Priebus made an exception, referring to Haley’s call to remove the flag “the right thing to do.”
“This flag has become too divisive and too hurtful for too many of our fellow Americans,” Priebus said in a statement. “While some say it represents different things to different people, there is no denying that it also represents serious divisions that must be mended in our society. For South Carolina, taking down this Confederate flag is a step in mending those divisions.”
The concern over the potential political blowback ran so deep that senior South Carolina Republicans decided to take a stand — and against the flag at that — after years of studiously avoiding the debate for years for fear of losing votes. Haley was no exception.
Among them are Sen. Lindsey Graham, who also happens to be a presidential candidate; Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Mark Sanford, a former governor. On Monday, all three were on camera with Haley as she called for the Confederate battle flag to be permanently removed from the Capitol grounds. Doing so requires a two-thirds vote of the GOP-controlled legislature, and Haley said she wants lawmakers to act immediately rather than wait for next year’s legislative session.
“My own grandfathers fought in the Civil War,” Moore, the state GOP chairman, told the Washington Examiner in an email. “The Confederate battle flag does represents heritage for many, but for too many others it represents division and oppression. I think we can find a better way to honor our history.”
In recent days, the Republican 2016 contenders had treaded lightly on the flag issue, wary of losing votes in the crucial South Carolina presidential primary even as they worried about the impact of their hands-off approach on rank and file voters in other parts of the country. The most any of them would do was acknowledge the divisive symbolism of the Confederate flag while calling it a matter for South Carolina to decide free of outside meddling.
But Haley provided the political cover they needed to more aggressively disavow the Confederate battle flag and the racist part of America’s past that it represents for many, and they took advantage of it. No sooner had Haley finished her Monday afternoon news conference than Ohio Gov. John Kasich; former Texas Gov. Rick Perry; and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tweeted or issued statements of support.
“Removing the flag is an act of healing and unity, that allows us to find a shared purpose based on the values that unify us,” Perry said.
Now it’s up to the Republicans who run the South Carolina to deliver. It effectively takes a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to pass legislation removing the flag from its perch above the Confederate memorial that sits adjacent to the Capitol; failure to do so could thrust the subject back into the 2016 and force the GOP presidential contenders off message.
State Sen. Tom Davis, a Republican who supports taking down the flag, said in an interview that he is “optimistic” his chamber will vote to do so. There are 16 Democrats in the Senate, all of whom are expected to vote to take down the flag (one of the victims of the Charleston Church shooting was Sen. Clementa Pinckney, a Democrat.) With Democrats unified, it should take only 14 Republican yes votes to get to a two-thirds majority.
“It’s complicated — a lot more complicated than people who don’t live in this state realize,” cautioned one Republican consultant who is based in South Carolina. “Pure politics, we don’t want it on the table. We want to talk about the issues.”
Disclosure: The author’s wife works as an adviser to Scott Walker.
