Rewriting history live on C-SPAN

Slick Willie eulogizes the ol' country Klansman:



So it's perfectly justified to sign up with a blatantly racist group if getting elected to higher office is the end result, according to Mr. Clinton.  Byrd was just going along to get along, you see.  He simply had to appear as backwards and crude as the peasants themselves in order to gain their approval and vote instead of, you know, maybe setting an example for the unwashed yokels.

By the way, Byrd by his own admission joined the Klan in 1942.  In 1944, he wrote the following to Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo regarding the forced integration of the Armed Forces:

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Two years after he first signed up for the cowardly Sheet Squad.  Not a lot of joiner's regret at that point, we'd argue.

In 1946 or 1947, according to Colbert King of the Washington Post, Byrd wrote the following to a "Grand Wizard" in the Klan: 

"The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.".

In 1952, while running for the House of Representatives, Byrd claimed that he first joined the Klan because it was "anti-communist", even though in 1942 the Soviet Union was in fact our fierce ally against Germany, Japan and Italy and no Red Scare existed whatsoever at that point in time.   

Finally, in 1964 Byrd saw fit to filibuster the Civil Rights Act.

All of these acts and statements over decades on the part of Byrd certainly prove that he was no friend of minorities, to say the least, until it was politically expedient for him to do so.  Clinton, ever-fond of stretching the truth, comes through once again by dismissively labeling Byrd's clearly lengthy racist past as "fleeting". 

We wouldn't expect anything less from the Wizard of "Is".