My column for Politico today is on the Charleston reaction and the New South:

It is telling that the South Carolina governor who called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state Capitol is a woman, an Indian-American — and a Republican.
The rush to efface the Confederate symbol from the South in the wake of the Charleston shootings, with Gov. Nikki Haley among the leaders, is a lagging indicator. The region has been transformed over the past 50 years, from an institutionally racist backwater to a part of the American mainstream more alluring to African-Americans than less dynamic parts of the country.
Dylann Roof is many things: a racist and a terrorist, pathetic and hellishly cruel. But he is not a representative Son of the South.
It is a stupid smear to pretend otherwise, but the Left has been channeling a less tasteful version of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s old dictum: Never let a hideous massacre go to waste.