Losing Battles

Haley Barbour Won’t Denounce KKK Leader

New controversy for presidential hopeful.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is quickly pulling ahead in the race to be 2012’s most embarrassing Republican: He is refusing to condemn a state proposal to honor a former KKK leader and Confederate general with a license plate. "I don't go around denouncing people. That's not going to happen," said Barbour, who does, in fact, go around denouncing President Obama. The general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, led a massacre of black Union troops and then became a grand wizard in the KKK after the war. Barbour was under fire last month for saying that the Civil Rights era wasn’t “that bad” and praising the white-supremacist White Citizens Council for maintaining order in his town. On the license plates, Barbour said, "I know there's not a chance it'll become law."