Rick Perry Throws in the Towel on the Confederate-Flag License Plate
Who said Rick Perry running for president wouldn't bring any benefits besides hilarity?
The South shall not rise again on Texas plates.
Thanks to his decision to go for it, Texans will not be subjected to Confederate flags on their license plates.
The Texas Tribune first noticed that Perry told a Florida TV station that Perry had finally weighed in on the proposed plate, which goes before a panel for approval this month.
"We don't need to be scraping old wounds," he said. (Which is odd, because Perry appointed the panel, and it split 4-4 with one absence on an earlier vote on whether to scrape old wounds.)
State Senator Rodney Ellis of Houston applauded the decision.
I am extremely pleased by Governor Perry's stand opposing license plates which honor the confederate battle flag. He is exactly right when he says Texas does not need to open old wounds. I just hope the Department of Motor Vehicles Board will listen to the bipartisan chorus of voices opposing these plates. The governor, local, state and federal officials and tens of thousands of Texans from across the state have said 'no' to state-sanctioned plates glorifying oppression and bigotry.
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, also of our area, didn't.
Patterson, of course, is the guy who testified before the panel earlier this year about a proposed Buffalo Soldiers plate:
what did the Buffalo Soldiers do -- that's the African-American cavalry members of the 9th and 10th Cavalry who served on the Texas frontier in the 1870s and 1880s, but what did they do except to participate in a genocidal against an entire race of people, the American Plains Indians?
Now it's possible, of course, that Rick Perry would have made the same decision he did today if he hadn't been running for President.
It's possible.
Write Comment
Email to Friend
Print Article
