Bush, Rubio respond to Confederate flag issue

MIAMI — The controversy over the public display of the Confederate flag hit the presidential campaign trail in Florida on Saturday, three days after a massacre of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina.

Two Florida presidential candidates, former Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, weighed in after Mitt Romney, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, said South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag flying over its state Capitol.

“To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor Charleston victims,” Romney wrote on Twitter.

The issue is tricky for Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination because they’re loathe to offend South Carolina voters whose support they need in that state’s early primary.

As governor in 2001, Bush had a Confederate banner removed from Florida’s Capitol and placed in a state museum where, he wrote Saturday, “it belonged.” He wrote on Facebook that he was confident South Carolina’s leaders “will do the right thing.”

On Facebook, he wrote: “My position on how to address the Confederate flag is clear. In Florida, we acted, moving the flag from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged…. Following a period of mourning, there will rightly be a discussion among leaders in the state about how South Carolina should move forward and I’m confident they will do the right thing.”

Rubio, speaking to reporters in Miami on Saturday before a Lincoln Day dinner speech, didn’t go as far as Bush.

He emphasized that it is “important to let the people of South Carolina move forward” on the issue on their own.

“This is an issue that they should debate and work through and not have a bunch of outsiders going in and telling them what to do about it,” he said. “Ultimately, the people of South Carolina will make the right decision for South Carolina.”

He declined to say what he thought the right decision would be.

Of the movement of the flag to a museum in Florida, Rubio said Saturday, “I support that decision.”

But the Huffington Post reported that as a state representative in 2001 after Bush acted, Rubio cosponsored legislation that would have protected the Confederate battle flag’s place in public spaces.

The measure was never voted on by the full House.