It's becoming perfectly clear. George Allen would be the perfect successor to George W. Bush. They're a perfect match.

Everybody knows that.

But the real question is, will that hurt his election chances in a Southern state in Bush's America?

The right did it first, now the left is doing it. If this is the only way to win elections, then every contest will come to rehashing 30 year old bullshit. No intelligent being wants to put his/her family and friends through this. This is not relevant to the current issues. EVERYBODY did stupid shit in their past, what matters if they continue to do so. The recent history of this man speaks volumes. The next politician with a good to great recent history may be sunk by a 30 year old story brought up by some ass with nothing better to do!

Growing up in the south, I can state with authority that everybody sporting the Confederate battle flag (as Allen did) did so to advertise their red-neck racist ideology.

The reports of Allen's past use of the "N-word" only confirms Allen's overt racism.

I grew up in the South. Ya'll got to keep this stuff in perspective.

See, boys is going to be boys. They don't mean no harm, they's just a little wild sometimes ya know? They just raisin' a little hell like good Rebel boys do.

Why stickin' a deer head in some coon's mailbox ain't nuthin' compared to what some a them other boys was doin' back then. I mean, it waren't no lynchin' or nothin' like that.

Down in Virginia some of them guys be get so wild on a Friday night, they'd go ridin' in a car through the colored neighborhood with their headlights off, driving real slow, just to see if they could get them porch monkeys to run hide. Sometime they'd stick baseball bats out the windows and try to whack some black kid upside the head as they drove by. I remember they used to call that "nigger knockin'" Why they'd split their britches laughin'.They didn't mean no harm.

They's just boys.

Welcome to the real Virginia, the real Virginia. The real America.

and others who were not committed to an Allen presidency decided with his mangling of the Macaca debacle decided...as Allen's racial opinions aren't exactly a secret...and he is not the most discreet person in the world...

to let him go.

Sort of like Katherine Harris, he makes everyone look bad.

In the letters section when this story first broke on Salon, there were Republicans using their real names recounting Allen racism stories.

I do believe the Republican establishment is sending Allen a message.

And they are letting him go, now.

Virginia just elected a Democratic governor for the second time in a row.

It is a purple state has been undergoing demographic changes in recent years. Webb is a former Republican, and in line with many moderates in Virginia.

And Allen is just too much of an embarrassment to be allowed to proceed any further.

Expect more revelations...and expect them to come from Republicans.

What a piece of work that letter was. Let's see, put on a little Snuffy Smith accent (yeah, that's authentic, especially since all of us Virginians talk alike), then lump everybody in one state together (since all of us Virginians think alike), and dismiss the whole thing with the wave of a hand. I've lived in the south, and I've lived in the midwest, and I've seen racism in both places. I've also seen fairminded people in both places. What I haven't seen is anybody get helped by someone responding to prejudice with more prejudice, responding to stereotype with more stereotype, responding to simplistic thinking with more simplistic thinking. Next time, perhaps try to remember that there's a variety of people all over. Perhaps also try to remember that preaching snarkily to the choir doesn't do much good; moreover, the kind of approach your letter takes does no good except maybe give a cheap chuckle to certain members of the choir who aren't quite as converted as they think they are.

I think this is the key comment from a previous poster:

"Growing up in the south, I can state with authority that everybody sporting the Confederate battle flag (as Allen did) did so to advertise their red-neck racist ideology".

I was born in 1941 and grew up in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada (population about 30,000) in the early 1950's. I do not recall even seeing, let alone knowing, a black man, woman or child in Moose Jaw in the years I lived there. But my favourite baseball player was Jackie Robinson, because he was black and had succeeded in spite of the racial barriers placed in his way. My favourite book was a slender, paper back, biography of George Washington Carver that my father gave me to read. That being so, I still continued to innocently refer to the licorice jelly candies I bought at the corner store as "nigger babies", and to Brazil nuts as "nigger toes". The mere use of the word back then does not mean that I was a pre-teen racist. However, if I had lived in Virgina in the 1970's, and claimed never to have used the word "nigger", it would have been because I knew at the time that it was offensive and I had made a conscious decision never to use it. I submit it is illogical to suggest that a person, who, in that environment would make a point of displaying a Confederate flag, would also make a point of never using the term "nigger". I suggest that leaves two issues to be resolved in the Allan case- was he a racist in the 70', and is he being honest today?

I lived in Virginia while Allen was governor, and I remember him as an arrogant ass. I voted for anyone on the ballot except him. He was the lockstep neoconservative type who believed anyone who criticized the Almighty Republican Family Values was a traitor. Mainline Karl Rove-Newt Gingrich-Jerry Falwell-Donald Rumsfeld stuff.

When you are as intolerant as that, racism is no stretch. Granted, being far right is not proof of racism, but when you make a living being a rigid bastard, the charge is very hard to shake.

Clinton was a moderate and had no problem making up with feminists after the Lewinsky scandal. That's the way it is: if you have a reputation for flexibility people tend to believe you when you say you are not prejudiced. But when you make a living attacking gays and accusing your critics of being in league with the enemy you find that people do not cut you slack when you claim you are not prejudiced.

Bill Shakespeare called it hoist upon your own pitard.

Tough luck, Georgie. If you had played nice with the minorities all those years some of them might have come out to defend you.

I shed a tear over your political grave.