Wa. Post Softens George Allen's Racist Past

In a story tracking Virginia Senator George Allen's post-macaca moment, the Washington Post acknowledges that "charges of racial insensitivity... have dogged him for years as governor, senator and now presidential hopeful" but, in chronicling those charges, omits the worst of the evidence against Allen and softpedals the rest.

The story deals with George Allen's alleged racism by balancing two nasty anecdotes against two of Allen's supposed attempts at atonement:

Meanwhile, Allen's past -- which includes a youthful admiration of the Confederate flag and an office that once displayed a noose -- lurched back into the public spotlight during the Republican's senatorial battle against Webb, a Navy secretary during the Reagan administration.

During the past two years, as Allen has flirted with the idea of running for president in 2008, he has introduced symbolic anti-lynching legislation in the Senate and promised to lead the charge for an official apology for slavery. Political pundits who follow Allen closely said the new comments threaten that well-planned effort.

But Allen's closet has more skeletons than that. Not only was that noose hanging from a tree in Allen's law office, but while governor of Virginia, Allen proclaimed a "Confederate Heritage Month" by calling the civil war "a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights" but making no mention of slavery. He also called the NAACP an "extremist group," opposed the 1991 Civil Rights Act, as a state legislator was against creating a holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and prominently displayed a Confederate Flag in his living room. Three previous Virginia governors had turned down invitations to membership in a Richmond social club with a publicized history of racism; George Allen accepted. And all this from a guy who grew up wealthy in California. (Thanks to Brendan Nyhan for publicizing his research on Allen; see also a New Republic profile for more.)

Apparently George Allen has been able to get away with this kind of talk with Virginians, and thinks it will fly in a presidential run. And if he keeps getting media coverage like this, it very well might.