The consultants pushing Corey’s campaign in order to sell a database to Laura Ingraham’s prospective U.S. Senate campaign in Virginia Corey Stewart’s death spiral of a campaign continues unabated with — yet again — several miscues.
First, Stewart issued a tweet decrying the removal of a Confederate monument.
…only it wasn’t a Confederate monument at all. Turns out, the monument was erected by members of the White League (yes, that is actually their name) to commemorate an event where they beat the hell out of a bunch of black people, as Erick Erickson over at The Resurgent helpfully explains:
The Democratic Party of Louisiana in 1874 had a paramilitary unit that harassed blacks and pro-Union whites. When a biracial government got elected after the Civil War, the Louisiana Democratic Party launched its paramilitary unit into the heart of New Orleans to seize control. They eventually lost, but once Reconstruction ended, they poured back into government, drove out any and all blacks, and made sure whites who were sympathetic to the black community disappeared.
Those Democrats set up the Liberty Monument to remind people of an attempted violent overthrow of a democratically elected bi-racial government.
*drums fingers on the desk*
Of course, that was just Monday morning. By Monday evening, Stewart had made his way to the Republican stronghold of Chesterfield County, where a crowd of 100 practically sat on their hands, according to a source. Of the handful of people who applauded, six were paid staffers “shipped in” (i.e., not committee members) and the other four? Silence…
How bad was it in Chesterfield? Another observer estimated about 90% of the crowd was wearing Gillespie stickers. Stewart did not remain long enough to press the flesh — and left moments after delivering his speech to the conservative faithful.
Needless to say, Stewart’s campaign was already haunted by the ghost of racialist sentiment long before he embraced the Confederate flag as a political weapon. To now commit an error so forced as to be almost blatant only confirms the very worst of the narrative that has been crafted around the Stewart campaign.
…though we don’t expect Stewart to bow out anytime soon.