Ayers Unhinged Again

In Sunday's Anniston Red Star, publisher H. Brandt Ayers speaks rather disapprovingly of Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign for President and the emergence of Republican Party dominance in the South:

Unwittingly, Sen. Goldwater led a motley parade of White Citizens Councils, Kluxers and old-line segregationists out of the Democratic Party to install racial prejudice as the core of the Southern Republican Party.

“It still is,” Jimmy Carter told me recently. “It has been; it always has been, ever since 1964. That’s right. I agree completely.” The former president and Nobel Laureate spoke with some heat.

Mr. Ayers had allowed earlier in the column that Sen. Goldwater was "no racist" himself. But, apparently everyone who voted for him in 1964 was, and his ideological heirs in today's Republican Party are, as well. That sounds like a cheap shot to me, and it is demonstrably untrue.

But, what good would a cheap shot be without backing it up with a name drop? In this case, the honors went to St. Jimmy, who seems even more irritable than usual now that the presidential election is over. Jimmy Carter is highly esteemed by Mr. Ayers, which should serve as a perpetual reminder of why not to listen to the Red Star when it comes to forming judgments about politicians.