THE BUZZ: Taking down flag ‘like Lee at Appomattox’ for SC senator
Richland state Sen. John Courson stood directly behind Gov. Nikki Haley as his fellow Republican called Monday for the Confederate flag to be taken down from the State House grounds.
The call came after nine African-Americans, including state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, D-Jasper, were killed at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston by a 21-year-old white man, Dylann Roof.
Those slayings were too much for Haley and Courson, a Marine Corps veteran who shares a middle name with Confederate Gen. Robert Edward Lee.
Courson’s support of moving the flag to the Confederate Relic Room is momentous for a military buff who cannot think of Civil War battlefield he has not visited.
“It’s almost like Lee at Appomattox,” Courson said of his decision to vote to move the flag. “It’s just time to get it over with.”
Courson’s Senate office has a wall of Lee memorabilia, including a photo of an ancestor who fought for the Confederacy. Courson said he respects how Lee handled the surrender, which “led to the fact we’re reunited as a country.”
Another state lawmaker with Confederate ancestors – Republican state Rep. Kirkman Finlay III, R-Richland – also cast a vote last week to debate the flag’s removal this summer.
Finlay is a descendant of Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton III, who once commanded Lee’s cavalry and later was a S.C. governor and U.S. senator. Hampton’s statue stands on the south side of the State House.
Photos of Roof, posing with a Confederate flag, helped re-ignite the flag debate.
“That flag has suffered so much abuse over the years by white extremist groups,” said Courson last week. “It needs to be placed in a position of honor and not have the abuse that has been thrown at it by people who use it as a hate symbol.”
Before S.C. lawmakers adopted their 2000 compromise, moving the flag from the State House dome to its current location, Courson said he visited Alabama to see that state’s flag compromise, struck in the mid-1990s.
Alabama residents on both sides of that state’s flag debate thought it had been appropriate to move the flag from dome of their state capitol to a monument memorializing Confederate dead.
South Carolina then reached a similar compromise.
Last week, however, Alabama’s compromise unraveled. In the wake of Charleston, Gov. Robert Bentley ordered the Confederate flag removed from that state’s capitol grounds.
Next week, legislators are expected to order the flag struck in South Carolina.
“That thug that took those lives defined the Confederate battle flag in a way no one else has been able to define it,” Courson said.
2016 in S.C.
▪ Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security will host a national security forum with former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum , R-Pa., a GOP candidate for president in 2016, at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in Room 165 of The Citadel’s Bond Hall.
Santorum also will be at town hall meeting at noon Monday at Sun City’s Pinckney Hall in Bluffton.
▪ GOP candidate Jeb Bush will be in Charleston Monday morning, meeting with African-American pastors after canceling a visit scheduled for the morning after the Emanuel AME church massacre. Later Monday, the former Florida governor will visit Nephron Pharmaceutical Co. in West Columbia, touring the business and meeting with employees.
Coulter’s Haley gaffe
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter got her facts wrong about Gov. Haley’s birthplace when talking about the S.C. governor’s decision to call for the Confederate flag to be removed.
“I’d really like to like Nikki Haley since she is a Republican,” Coulter said on the Fox Business Channel. “On the other hand, she is an immigrant and does not understand America’s history.”
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley was born in Bamberg.
This story was originally published June 27, 2015 at 9:10 PM with the headline "THE BUZZ: Taking down flag ‘like Lee at Appomattox’ for SC senator."