Scott Walker Whistling Dixie With States Rights Response on Continued Flying of Confederate Flag

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was unwilling this weekend to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds in South Carolina on the heels of the horrific, racially-motivated mass killing of black churchgoers in Charleston.

Instead, Walker as part of his audition for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination evoked the traditional rationale to justify slavery, segregation and Jim Crow laws by declaring it was a “state issue.”

The following are the statements of One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross:

“Scott Walker is whistling Dixie when he calls the flying of the Confederate flag on government property a ‘state issue.’ We’ve heard that rhetoric before, it was used to defend the worst abuses of power and shameful discrimination in our nation’s history.

“There’s no denying the racism and oppression represented by the Confederate flag and there’s no defense for its display in public, on public property.

“It is appalling that Scott Walker is so blinded by his political ambition he’s willing to abide the flying of a flag that symbolizes racism, hatred and oppression.”