{"id":8398,"date":"2017-08-18T14:32:23","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T18:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8398"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:08:09","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T21:08:09","slug":"miller-causes-a-huge-headache-for-maryland-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8398","title":{"rendered":"Miller Causes a Huge Headache for Maryland Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Democrats all over the country have lately been demanding that Confederate statues and other monuments celebrating slavery be taken down.\u00a0 That extends to Maryland, where Baltimore Mayor Cathy Pugh had four Confederate monuments removed in the middle of the night<\/a>.\u00a0 But when Maryland Democrats demanded that an Annapolis statue of former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney also be removed, they ran into opposition from arguably the state\u2019s most powerful Democratic politician: Senate President Mike Miller.<\/p>\n

Democrats\u2019 objections to Taney are rooted in his authoring of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s Dred Scott decision<\/a>, which held that descendants of Africans imported as slaves into the U.S. could not be American citizens.\u00a0 In 2015, Governor Larry Hogan defended the Taney statue in Annapolis in the Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) says he is opposed to a change in the state song and likened the effort to calls for removing the statue of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, author of the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision, from the grounds of the State House.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s political correctness run amok,\u201d Hogan said in an interview last week. \u201cWhere do we stop? Do we get rid of the George Washington statues out here and take down all the pictures from all the people from the Colonial era that were slave owners? Do we change the name of Washington County, Carroll County and Calvert County?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t change history, and we\u2019re not going to be able to rewrite history,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think we ought to be changing any of that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After Democrats including House Speaker Mike Busch pushed back this week, Hogan changed his mind and agreed to remove the statue. \u00a0The Governor was one of three members of the four-member board with jurisdiction over the statue to vote for removal.\u00a0 But one member of the board objected to the process of deciding the issue by email: Senate President Mike Miller.\u00a0 In his letter, Miller argued that Taney opposed slavery and \u201cfreed his slaves early in his life,\u201d joined an \u201canti-kidnapping society\u201d to protect free blacks and remained loyal to the Union until his death.\u00a0 Miller also cited support for the statue from former Baltimore City Delegate Pete Rawlings and a descendant of Dred Scott.\u00a0 We reprint the letter below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever one thinks of Miller\u2019s opinion, it\u2019s a big headache for Maryland Democrats.\u00a0 Much of their strategy to oppose Governor Hogan has been to criticize him for silence in the face of actions by President Donald Trump.\u00a0 That strategy has affected the behavior of the Governor, who just said that Trump \u201cmade a terrible mistake\u201d<\/a> in his comments on the white supremacist invasion of Charlottesville.\u00a0 But what of Miller?\u00a0 If his comments on the Taney statue had come from Hogan, Maryland Democrats would be swarming all over him.\u00a0 What happens when such sentiments come from one of the most powerful Democrats in the state?<\/p>\n

One Democrat who did not blanch from criticizing the Senate President was Senator Rich Madaleno (D-18), who is running for Governor.\u00a0 Madaleno wrote on Facebook that Miller \u201cis wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The rest of the Democrats now have a choice.\u00a0 They can be intellectually honest and take on one of the leaders of their party.\u00a0 Or they can ignore Miller and look like hypocrites.<\/p>\n

As with Hogan on Trump, silence is not an option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Democrats all over the country have lately been demanding that Confederate statues and other monuments celebrating slavery be taken down.\u00a0 That extends to Maryland, where Baltimore Mayor Cathy Pugh had four Confederate monuments removed in the middle of the night.\u00a0 But when Maryland Democrats demanded that an Annapolis statue of former U.S. … Continue reading Miller Causes a Huge Headache for Maryland Democrats<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,1197,141,53],"tags":[1545,968,359,1485],"class_list":["post-8398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-larry-hogan","category-mike-miller","category-rich-madaleno","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-larry-hogan","tag-mike-miller-2","tag-rich-madaleno"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2bs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8403,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8398\/revisions\/8403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}