Barbour Struggles to Escape Good Ol’ Boy Image
While stumbling along toward a campaign for the White House in 2012, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour just can’t seem to shake that good ol’ boy image, despite his best efforts.
He ordered the release of the Scott sisters, who served 16 years of a life sentence for allegedly facilitating an armed robbery amounting to $11, though he still refuses to pardon them. To redeem himself for calling the White Citizens’ Council (a KKK front) “leaders of the community,” Barbour pushed to build a black history museum in the state’s Capitol in Jackson. And still, the Mississippi governor struggles to distance himself from the perception that he is a racist.
“Slavery was the primary, central, cause of secession,” Barbour told Politico’s Robert McElvaine in late March. “The Civil War was necessary to bring about the abolition of slavery.” “Abolishing slavery was morally imperative and necessary, and it’s regrettable that it took the Civil War to do it. But it did.”
Duh, right. The truth is that the statement made by the Mississippi governor should not be surprising but it is. That’s because he is the embodiment of an old Southern white guy.