Objectively pro-lynching

DNC chair Howard Dean gets a lot of grief for being outspoken.

Some of that is from the media who don't think he's respectful enough to their way of doing business; some is from the people he's outspoken against. So neither is anything to be taken very seriously.

And alas, sometimes it also includes getting fragged by his own people.

Now obviously, not every single Republican is a white Christian. Howard Dean doesn't believe that. Not even white Christian Republicans believe that. Nevertheless, they have to explain this.

And now this.

Yes, 15 out of 100 Senators--more specifically, 15 Republicans out of the 55 Republicans in the Senate--felt that, what with one thing and another, it was imprudent to go on record as saying that 100 years of the Senate looking the other way on lynching blacks after the Civil War might have been a bad thing. (And, having withheld their support, many of them are now trying to deny it.)

Imagine that. Perhaps Cheney et al. would be more comfortable simply saying that the GOP leadership is objectively pro-lynching.

There are a lot of top-level Democrats who have to back off of Dean and figure out where their priorities really are.

But even more important, there are a lot of sensible, decent people out there who have to face the hard question: Is this the Republican party you want to be affiliated with?