A Morning Edition story today on President Bush’s continued refusal to speak to the NAACP references the widely-reported remarks by RNC chair Ken Mehlman which have been seen as an apology for the Republican’s Nixon-era “Southern Strategy”. At 3:42 into the interview, however, they report this immediately after playing Mehlman saying “we were wrong” in front of a crowd:
DON GONYEA (NPR): But if that was meant as an apology — and early media reports treated it as one — Mehlman himself tempered the remarks later in the day in an interview with NPR:
KEN MEHLMAN: I think it’s a mistake when people talk about a “Southern Strategy.” The fact is that in the past folks in the North, the South, the East, and the West didn’t do a good enough job in reaching out to African-Americans.
GONYEA: Mehlman then added:
MEHLMAN: If anything, the Democrat [sic] Party is today benefiting from racial polarization. It’s certainly not in my best interests when Democrats get 90% of the African-American vote.