POLITICS

Republicans Tread Carefully in Criticism of Confederate Flag

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The Confederate battle flag that flies next to a Civil War monument on the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol.Mladen Antonov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 
WASHINGTON — The massacre of nine African-Americans in a storied Charleston church last week, which thrust the issues of race relations and gun rights into the center of the 2016 presidential campaign, has now resurfaced another familiar and divisive question in the emerging contest for the Republican nomination: what to do with the Confederate battle flag that flies on the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol.
And similarly to some of their predecessors seeking to win the state’s first-in-the-South primary election, the leading Republican candidates are treading delicately so as not to risk offending the conservative white voters who venerate the most recognizable emblem of the Confederacy.
Jeb Bush issued a statement on Saturday indicating he was confident that South Carolina “will do the right thing.” As Florida’s governor, Mr. Bush in 2001 ordered the Confederate flag to be taken from its public display outside his state’s Capitol.
Senator Marco Rubio, also of Florida, told reporters he thought the state would “make the right choice for the people of South Carolina.”
But neither candidate would state explicitly whether they wanted South Carolina to remove from state-sanctioned display a flag that for many African-Americans represents a particularly searing reminder of slavery.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin begged off entirely from questions about what to do with the flag in South Carolina or whether it represents racism, saying that he would not address any such matters until the victims of the mass shooting were buried.
The carefully calibrated answers were a vivid illustration of the challenge Republicans face in attempting, simultaneously, to broaden their party’s appeal to minorities while also energizing those white conservatives who are uneasy about what they see as bowing to political correctness.
Three days after a 21-year-old white man with a recent history of anti-black views is believed to have killed Clementa Pinckney, a pastor and state senator, along with eight members of Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the presidential campaign finally caught up to a country reeling from the gruesome display of racial terror.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, hoping to maximize black turnout in both the Democratic primary contest and the general election, used the shootings to talk at a conference of mayors on Saturday in raw terms about bigotry and structural racial disparities, describing race as “a deep fault line in America.”
And both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Walker expressed admiration for the stirring acts of forgiveness shown by the victim’s families when they had a chance to address the suspect in court Friday. “They showed the world what it is to be a Christian,” Mr. Walker said in a speech here to an evangelical organization.
Yet on the same day that photos emerged of the suspect, Dylann Roof, holding a Confederate flag in one hand and a gun in the other, none of theRepublican candidates expressly said that the same banner that has been flying at full-staff outside South Carolina’s Capitol since the shootings should be furled.
Mr. Bush came the closest, recalling when he was governor of Florida, the state moved a Confederate flag “from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged.” But he went no further than predicting that South Carolina would “do the right thing.”
If the Republicans were reluctant to call directly for the flag to come down, they realized that they had to speak more plainly about the racial motivation behind the attack.
After Mr. Bush seemed initially reluctant on Friday whether to ascribe the killings to race, his rivals were blunt on that question.
“I want to make it abundantly clear that I think the act, the crime that was committed on Wednesday is an act of racism,” Mr. Walker told reporters after his address.
Mr. Rubio said it was “an act motivated by racial hatred.”
The one high-profile Republican who spoke unambiguously about the flag is not running for president any longer. Mitt Romney said in a Twitter message Saturday: “Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.”
Mr. Romney had a similar position when he first ran in South Carolina’s primary in 2008. But former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, who was the runner-up in that contest and is a candidate again in 2016, suggested at the time that individuals from outside the state should not dictate what South Carolina does with the flag. That position, which was echoed on Saturday by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, is similar to the posture both George W. Bush and Senator John McCain took in the 2000 race, which Mr. Bush won. Not long after Mr. McCain dropped out of the campaign that year, he returned to Columbia, S.C., to admit that he had compromised his principles because he was scared of losing.
In a subsequent book, “Hard Call,” he said it was one of the worst decisions in his career to not have called for the flag to have been taken off the state Capitol building itself, where it then flew.
Yet the opinions of the previous two Republican nominees, each viewed warily by many conservatives, are likely to matter little to the current field.
What may mean more are the views of South Carolina’s Republican leadership, and some of them were saying Saturday that they appreciated the willingness of the candidates to give them space to address the matter.
One Republican legislator is already pushing to take it down. State Representative Norman D. Brannon, who represents a conservative district upstate and was a friend of Mr. Pinckney said he will file a bill in the next session of the legislature to remove the flag from the Capitol grounds.
In an interview Saturday, Mr. Brannon said every one of the approximately 25 legislators he had talked with about his measure had been positive, either expressing support or at least offering encouragement.
“The flag is kind of like algae in a lake,” he said. “It’s just barely under the surface, everybody knows it’s there, but unless something like this happens nobody talks about it.”
In this case, he spoke bluntly about what that something was.
“What lit the fire under this was the tragic death of my friend and his eight parishioners,” Mr. Brannon said. “It took my buddy’s death to get me to do this. I should feel ashamed of myself.”
He said that the presidential candidates should not mince words. “I would tell them to take a position on the flag.”
The fight over the flag’s placement has a long history in South Carolina. It was originally placed atop the Capitol during the administration of Gov. Fritz Hollings, a Democrat, in 1962 as the civil rights movement gained steam, ostensibly to mark the centennial of the Civil War.
There was a push in the late 1990s to take it down, an effort which partly contributed to the defeat of a Republican governor who supported its removal. The flag would continue to fly above South Carolina’s copper-domed Capitol until 2000, when a bipartisan agreement was reached moving it to a Confederate memorial nearby.
“That compromise was widely accepted,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “But in light of what has happened, that has to be revisited because the shooter is so associated with the flag.”
Mr. Graham, himself a presidential hopeful, said of his state’s leaders: “This is something we need to deal with and we will. Give us a chance to come together and deal with this in a responsible way.”
What could prove crucial in determining the flag’s fate, and whether the Republican presidential candidates will speak more decisively, is the view of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only African-American Republican in the Senate. Mr. Scott said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that after a period of mourning, his “voice will be clear” on the flag issue. “My position will be stated,” he said.
Mr. Graham is hoping to issue a joint statement with Mr. Scott and Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina after the victims’ funerals that would collectively address the flag’s status.
Unless Governor Haley calls the legislature back into a special session, the state will likely take up the issue when the next session begins in January — shortly before South Carolina’s presidential primary.
But many prominent Republicans there are privately hoping the state reaches a consensus well before that point to avert a primary dominated by race-related issues that could turn off the business community and depress the state’s lucrative tourism and convention industry.
Former State House Speaker David H. Wilkins, who played a key role in brokering the compromise to take the flag off the Capitol before serving as George W. Bush’s ambassador to Canada, said corporate executives would start a dialogue about the flag.
“I’m hearing already that many Chambers of Commerce around the state are planning to discuss the issue,” he said, predicting “a meaningful discussion after people have had a chance to grieve and heal.” But the issue, Mr. Wilkins said, would not ultimately have much resonance in the presidential race.
If that is the case, it will in part be because South Carolina is a state in transition, increasingly populated by those who have moved there from elsewhere, whether other parts of the country or overseas, and have little appetite for re-litigating historical disputes.
State Senator Tom Davis, a Republican from a coastal district filled with transplants, said he expected that opinion in the state had shifted since the 2000 agreement because of the changing demographics.
“You’ve seen South Carolina change,” said Mr. Davis, a former chief of staff to Mark Sanford, the former governor. “As time goes by, as a matter of demographics, South Carolina is becoming more and more cosmopolitan. The people of South Carolina and their collective sentiments may be quite different than they were.”
But what has not changed is the desire of many there for those who live outside the state to not inject themselves in South Carolina’s affairs.
State Senator Michael L. Fair, a Republican, said he could envision moving the flag “to a less prominent position.”
But he added: “I think each of the presidential candidates should stay away from what is clearly a South Carolina circumstance, they’re just going to invite criticism.”