United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has released a statement opposing the Confederate Battle Flag.
“The Confederate Battle Flag means different things to different people, but the fact that it continues to be a painful reminder of racial oppression to many suggests to me at least that it’s time to move beyond it, and that the time for a state to fly it has long since passed,” said McConnell in the statement. “There should be no confusion in anyone’s mind that as a people we’re united in our determination to put that part of our history behind us.”
McConnell, a Republican who was first elected to represent Kentucky in the Senate in 1984, issued his statement as controversy swells around South Carolina’s use of the Confederate flag on state grounds. Nine members of an historic African-American church in Charleston were gunned down by a suspect that is believed to be a white supremacist. Some Republican candidates for President have stated varying positions on the issue.
On Monday, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag, the symbol used by the rebel states in their failed uprising against the United States in the Civil War.
Kentucky’s other Senator, Rand Paul, also a Republican candidate for President, has not made his position on the flag known.
-Staff report