Ronald Reagan's racist appeals

No matter what the Republican candidates for president disagree on, there is one thing they agree on: Ronald Reagan was a great president, a paragon of morality and American values, and just this side of the second coming of Christ.

Therefore, it's worth reading Paul Krugman's column from yesterday's Times:

Innocent mistakes

So there’s a campaign on to exonerate Ronald Reagan from the charge that he deliberately made use of Nixon’s Southern strategy. When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that “I believe in states’ rights,” he didn’t mean to signal support for white racists. It was all just an innocent mistake.

So if you happen across a Republican, and he starts talking about Reagan, ask him about this.