Julian Bond: McDonnell Is Appealing To Party's Right Wing

By Marcus Rosenbaum

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has apologized for not mentioning slavery when he made April Confederate History Month. But that hasn't stemmed the controversy.

McDonnell's apology includes an addendum to his proclamation that calls slavery "evil" and blames it for the Civil War. But critics still question why the governor wanted a Confederate History Month in the first place.

Julian Bond, a lieutenant to the Reverend Martin Luther King, now teaches at the University of Virginia and American University. He says the last four Republican governors have done the same thing and there's a reason for that.

"To repeatedly remind Virginians that Republicans are speaking for that small segment of the population that supported the confederacy plays directly to the radical conservative base of the Republican Party, and that seems to me to be the purpose of the whole thing," says Bond.

Bond says that if McDonnell wanted to appeal to the entire population, why not have a month commemorating the Civil War as a whole and talk about ALL of it.