WASHINGTON — The GOP-controled United States House of Representatives has voted to restrict Confederate flag displays at national cemeteries over the objections of the vast majority of Republicans, including Alabama’s delegation.
Alabama’s lone Democrat, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL7) supported the measure, while the state’s six Republicans were opposed. The bill ultimately passed 265-159, with 84 Republicans joining all but one House Democrat in pushing the measure through.
The bill does not completely ban Confederate flags at national cemeteries, but limits the display of flags on individual graves to only two days each year — Confederate Memorial Day and Memorial Day — and bans the flags from being flown over large monuments or on flag polls.
“What we are seeing is a politically charged symbol being used to divide people along racial lines,” said Congressman Robert Aderholt (R-AL4). “But the truth of the matter is that the only people that are doing that today are the proponents of this amendment to remove flags from cemetery property.
“Every time the flag issue dies away from the news it is raised from the dead by people that seek to keep it alive for their own political purposes,” Aderholt continued. “It is time to let the dead remain dead. We should honor the dead in a peaceful way for their sacrifice instead of using them as a distraction from the important matters at hand.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan allowed the bill to come up for a vote in spite of it not having the support of the majority of Republicans. The relatively new speaker touted the move as an indication that the House has returned to “regular order” under his leadership and now allows open debate and votes on contentious issues.
“What changed is we have to get through these things, and if we’re going to have open rules and appropriations, which we have, which is regular order, people are going to have to take tough votes,” Ryan told reporters after the bill passed. “And I think people are acknowledging this — this is the kind of conversation we’ve had all along with our members, which is tough votes happen in open rules.
“People have to get used to that fact. That’s the way regular order works,” he added. “People realize the last thing we should do is derail our own appropriations process.”
A staffer for a Georgia Republican congressman compared the effort to ISIS’ terrorists destroying monuments in the Middle East.
“You know who else supports destroying history so that they can advance their own agenda?” Asked Pete Sanborn, legislative director for Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.). “ISIL. Don’t be like ISIL.”
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