“Remarkably, the messages, calls and comments I’ve gotten have mostly been more positive than growly,” said Taggart, a longtime Republican political operative and commentator. He added: “I’m not on Facebook, and I’ve been advised (people are) a lot more growly on Facebook.”
In a memo first published Sept. 4 on theconservative political blog Y’all Politics, Taggart said his party, which holds majorities in the Legislative and controls every statewide elected office except one, should “lead the charge to drop the Confederate battle flag from our state flag.”
“This memo is not intended to be a historical overview of the flag, or an indictment of those who prefer the status quo. Instead, it is a call for Mississippi Republicans to lead the way in a change that will make a strong, moral statement that we acknowledge and understand the reasons why our current state flag is divisive and hurtful to a significant number of our fellow Mississippians, and that will proclaim to the nation that the bicentennial Mississippi of 2017 is not the Mississippi of 1965, let alone the Mississippi of 1865 or 1890,” Taggart wrote.
Taggart, the former chief of staff to Gov. Kirk Fordice, the first Republican elected governor in Mississippi following 127 years of rule by Democrats, also picked apart tropes that keeping the flag – and by extension, Confederate monuments – are about Southern heritage and historic preservation.
“The simple fact is that the flag itself is highly polarizing, when the whole purpose of a state flag is to provide a symbol of unity, around which all our state’s citizens should be proud to rally. Arguments that Confederate monuments and the like will be the next to fall if we change the flag don’t wash. The state flag is different from monuments, street names, portraits, headstones and the like, because the state flag is supposed to be a symbol of all Mississippians’ civic identity. Sadly, we just cannot say that it is today,” Taggart said.
Taggart said Republican officials, including the Mississippi Republican State Central Committee, County Executive Committees and other Republican groups should adopt resolutions calling for the removal of the Confederate emblem.
Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, is the most prominent Republican official to call for a new flag; both U.S. senators have also called for a change. Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves have said voters should decide, similar to the 2001 ballot referendum when Mississippians voted two-to-one to keep the current flag.
Mississippi Today phoned a half-dozen GOP county chairs around the state Tuesday afternoon, and none of them wanted to talk about Taggart’s memo. A phone message and email to Mississippi Republican Party headquarters also went unreturned.
Despite his longtime work as a GOP operative, Taggart said his position on the flag is about what’s right and not political expediency. If anything, he acknowledges, there would likely be some political blowback for Republicans who come out in support of a new flag.
“I’m not proposing to do it because it’s a smart political decision – it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “Over time the flag is going to be changed. The question is: What side of history are Mississippi Republicans going to be on?”
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
Students of history read and study before claiming the “right side of history.” Otherwise, one becomes just another pathetic follower of the crowd’s opinion of our past.
Phil & Tate would rather pander
The entire (so-called) leadership of Mississippi is an Oxford/Jackson cabal that is incestual at best, and beastial at worst. They all need to go. For FAR too long Mississippians (and many other American’s who pay federal taxes) have been financially fleeced on a daily basis without inquiry – and from the Governor on down, they laugh at the average citizen while having no intention of elevating Mississippi into its present populist values that pervade each district, while many are punished locally if it disrupts the good ole’ boys and girls gravy train. Disgraceful, all of them. Shame we say! Shame!
Taggart: “Arguments that Confederate monuments and the like will be the next to fall if we change the flag don’t wash.”
Mr. Taggart has been living in a cave. If he had been watching the news the last few months he would know that isn’t true.
History be damned, PC will get us votes? What an idiot.