Your Jim Crow Republicans
By 
The new governor of South Carolina seems nice.
S.C. Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster will take his membership in the all-white Forest Lake Club with him to the Governor’s Mansion.
A pair of Democrats say the state’s next Republican governor must quit that membership to truly represent all of South Carolina.
However, a Republican in the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature says the membership is a non-issue.
McMaster, a member of the exclusive club for more than three decades, has no plans to quit the country club, his spokesman told The State.
McMaster also declined to renounce his membership in 2014, when then-Democratic state Rep. Bakari Sellers, now a CNN commentator, brought the issue up in their race for lieutenant governor. S.C. voters seemingly didn’t care. McMaster crushed Sellers by 19 points in that election.
Sellers said Friday that McMaster’s association with the club makes him a symbol of the past, like the Confederate flag.
“Henry McMaster is a good ol’ boy who is emblematic of where we’ve come from in South Carolina,” Sellers said. “For the next two years in South Carolina, maybe six, we will be stuck in the status quo.”
Status quo? If you are lucky. Given where the national Republican Party is going, a return to some sort of Jim Crow is far from impossible. And South Carolina is always going to lead the way on racism in government, or so it always has.
I’d like to say this is the greatest outrage you will hear about today. But it will probably about #23 on the list.