Had to respond to Weigel’s post.

A weird post from Dave Weigel, defending Barbour: Haley Barbour and the Citizens Councils.

Barbour is not dumb. If he’s being a revisionist about race in Mississippi, he’s not alone, and he’s fighting back against a media standard that all conservatives hate — this idea that Southerners and conservatives can never stop atoning for Jim Crow. Why should he have to apologize for this, after all? He wasn’t in a Citizens Council.

Barbour was speaking to a writer for the Weekly Standard, hardly the kind of person who would ask him to “atone for Jim Crow.” And in fact, Barbour wasn’t even asked about the Citizens’ Councils; he volunteered his defense of one of the most overtly racist organizations that has ever existed in the United States, all on his own.

With the exception of some people, like Howell Raines — who covered Barbour’s 1986 Senate bid — how many of these reporters know what they’re talking about, anyway?

Again, he was talking to the Weekly Standard, not The Nation.

And there are few things conservative voters hate more than being told they were on the wrong side of the Civil Rights movement.

They could have avoided being “told” they were on the wrong side of the civil rights movement by not being on the wrong side of the civil rights movement.