Poll: 29 percent of Mississippians would back a new Confederacy. Regarding the poll results and Jury duty.

The Sun Herald had an article about a recent poll taken of attitudes towards secession.

http://www.sunherald.com/2014/07/17/5701899/poll-29-percent-of-mississippians.html

The question pollsters question was:

"If there were another Civil War today, would you side with the Confederate States of America or the United States of America?"

It was run by Public Policy Polling (PPP). It was asked of 691 Mississippians.

Of all Mississippians polled, 29% would back the Confederate States of America (CSA).

The article states that only 2% of African Americans would support the CSA. One can only imagine how the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) would be interested in locating these African Americans to parade them around with a Confederate flag.

The article doesn't tell the statistics regarding white people in the U.S.A.

The article does break it down by party affiliation though.

Democrats: 82% for the USA and 9% for the CSA.
Republicans: 41% for the USA and 37% for the CSA.

What is astounding is that less than half the Republicans in Mississippi would support the USA.

Perhaps the whole point of this poll was to show that Republicans aren't that patriotic. As I have stated in earlier blog postings one of the Republicans regular political activities was to assert that the Democrats were somehow unpatriotic and the Republicans were more patriotic. When you have less than half of your supporters choose the USA your assertion of being more patriotic becomes absurd.

The results were further broken down by who people supported in the Republican primary.

For Thad Cochran supporters 61% chose the USA which I think is very low, but not surprising for a candidate that interviewed in Southern Partisan, 22% chose the CSA.

For Tea Party challenger McDaniels, 38% chose the USA and 37% chose the CSA. What is rather amazing is that 62% would choose the CSA or aren't sure that they would chose the USA.

I was not able to find a link to the poll results at the PPP website.

I think that in Mississippi screening out pro-CSA supporters from jury pools is a very reasonable activity. People who would choose the CSA should not be be jurors.

The poll adds additional justification to my article on jury duty published in the Black Commentator. The following is the free guest link.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/507/507_confederacy_jury_selection_sebesta_hague_guests_share.html

U.S. Senator Thad Cochran interviewed in the "Southern Partisan" how he was against the Voting Rights Act, but in recent primary has career saved by Democratic and African American voters

U.S. Senator Thad Cochran interviewed in the Southern Partisan, Vol. 15 3rd Qtr., starting on page 32.
Cochran in the interview is against the Voting Rights Act.  I don't think it is a great thing that Cochran won. He is the last congressional Republican who interviewed in Southern Partisan who is still in office. If the tea party guy had won, there was a good chance that he would have lost the general election.  Then there would have been two Republicans who have had dealings with the neo-Confederates.

Some highlights from the interview are:

Page 34  

Southern Partisan: Well, the South continues to be singled out in respect to Federal Civil Rights legislation, for example; do you think this is still justified?

Cochran: No, I think that it is regrettable, and it ought to discontinued. When we last had the Voting Rights act before the Senate, I offered an amendment to apply the law to all states not just to those of the old Confederacy. ...


Page 34-35

Southern Partisan: You mentioned of course, that a lot of changes have taken place in the South, still some things remain; the Confederate Battle Flag for example; that is part of the state flag in Mississippi, are you comfortable with it?

Cochran: I don't think Congress ought to decide. I think it is strictly up to the state legislature of Mississippi, and if I were a member of the legislature I would vote to keep the flag as it is.

Southern Partisan: You don't see a problem with separating heritage or ---
Cochran: I think it is unfortunate that some have used it in a way that it raised questions about their views. but our state, I think, has demonstrated by our actions that it is not a racist state. We have full rights and participation in all the political processes. It's a decision the Mississippi state legislature has made, and I respect their decision.

Page 35

Southern Partisan: Do you favor stronger roles in state government?


Cochran: I think states have been mistreated in the extent that the federal government has usurped the responsibilities that many of us think are the rights of the states or are more properly vested in state government. We are seeing a transition back to, I think, some of those notions of states' rights and the Tenth Amendment, which protects the privacy of states by preventing usurpation by the federal government.