President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney showed they can agree on at least one thing.
Saturday morning Mitt Romney took a position few Republicans would dare. Via Twitter, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee urged South Carolina to take down the Confederate flag, after nine Black parishioners were shot and killed in a Charleston church.
It was a shocking statement from a Republican, especially from the de facto head of the GOP, given that nearly every 2016 Republican presidential candidate has stood by the flag’s prominent placement atop the South Carolina State House.
South Carolina Senator and presidential candidate Lindsey Graham has said the flag should stay. “It works here,” he said, adding it is a “part of who we are.”
In response, President Obama joined with Romney on Twitter late Saturday evening, offering this tweet linking to Romney’s:
It was a rare moment of unity, sorely needed in a week that, in typical fashion, showed Republican politicians and GOP presidential candidates attempting to minimize the racist attack on Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, or claiming it was an attack on religious freedom.
Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal were quick to push the false religious freedom angle, while others tried to play a states’ rights angle.
Sen. Marco Rubio was among those who claimed it as a states’ rights issue, and not for “outsiders” to decide.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, in a widespread story, said, “I don’t know” if the attack on the church was race-based, later adding it might have been. But he was quick to state on Friday that as governor he oversaw the removal of the Confederate flag from the Florida State House.
EARLIER:
Sign The MoveOn.org Petition To ‘Remove The Confederate Flag From All Government Places’
UPDATED – Rick Perry: Charleston Church Shooting Was A Drug-Related ‘Accident’ (Video)
Jeb Bush: ‘I Don’t Know’ If The Charleston Church Shooting Was Racially Motivated
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