The House voted Thursday on a Republican amendment to restore the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The century-old monument, which was removed in December, features an enslaved black “mother” holding the son of a white officer, while an enslaved black man follows the officer to war. The monument references the “Lost Cause,” a Civil War-era mythology favored by Confederate apologists.
The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), did not pass but won strong support at the House GOP conference. While 24 Republicans voted against restoring the monument, 192 voted in favor – nearly 89% of Republican voters.
This represents significantly more GOP support for a Confederate symbol than we have seen in the last decade.
Following the tragedy in Charleston, SC, in 2015, it wasn’t just then-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) who moved to take down the Confederate flag in her state; the Chamber soon held votes on also removing the flag from some federal cemeteries. In 2016, 84 House Republicans voted in favor of the proposal.
After Floyd’s murder, congressional Democrats resorted to an attempt to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol. The proposal was combined with an attempt to replace a bust of Roger B. Taney, author of the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision preserving slavery, with a bust of the first black Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall. It won the support of 72 House Republicans in 2020 and 67 in 2021.
(The GOP-controlled Senate also did not take up the proposal. The move from Taney to Marshall ultimately passed both chambers by voice vote and was signed into law by President Biden in 2022 after the Confederate statues piece was removed from the proposal. )
There was also a major conflict over these issues at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, when he vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act.
He did so because the legislation contained a plan to remove Confederate names from Department of Defense properties, including military bases. Both chambers ended up overriding this veto shortly before January 6, 2021, by overwhelming votes. These votes did not specifically refer to the Confederate proposal, but 109 House Republicans voted not to follow Trump’s line and override his veto.
The latest vote is also significant because of who voted in favor of the Confederate symbol: Republican leaders.
In 2016, then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and other Republican leaders allowed the vote despite objections from many members. Ryan, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) voted in favor of removing the Confederate flag from some federal cemeteries.
McCarthy and Scalise also voted in favor of removing Confederate statues from the Capitol in the wake of Floyd’s murder, with McCarthy spinning the measure this way: “All statues removed by this bill are statues of Democrats.” (The South was dominated by Democrats during Civil War times; it is now overwhelmingly Republican.)
But on Thursday, among those who voted in favor of restoring the Confederate Memorial in Arlington were every major Republican Party leader in the House, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Scalise, who is now the House majority leader.
It is difficult to make direct comparisons between these votes, as they deal with different instances. Republicans who might have thought that the Confederate flag did not belong in federal cemeteries or that Confederate leaders did not deserve to be honored in the Capitol of a nation they fought against may have a different opinion regarding the Confederate Memorial in Arlington.
Defenders of the monument presented it, in fact, as a symbol of reconciliation and unification after the Civil War, rather than celebrating the Confederacy. Instead, they call it the “Memorial of Reconciliation.” Clyde did not mention the words “Confederate” or “Confederacy” once in his speech supporting the amendment on Thursday.
“Let’s unite against the destruction of our history,” Clyde said. “We will fight for the principles of healing and unity, which is exactly what this memorial was created for.” (For more information on the history of the memorial, see here.)
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) responded, “The monument in question is a basic ode to the Confederacy, to romanticize the Lost Cause.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) promised Friday to make sure voters knew about the “disgraceful” Republican votes ahead of the 2024 elections.
Whatever the merits, it is difficult to separate the vote from a growing tendency in the Trump-era Republican Party to be unapologetic about issues related to race, as perhaps best exemplified by the party’s growing pushback against diversity policies.
Party leaders have clearly been concerned over the past decade about such votes on Confederate issues and what they look like. On Thursday, the party not only promoted this vote on its own; decided to stop worrying.
