Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t find himself in agreement with E.J. Dionne regularly. Indeed, it is, at the very best, a once in a blue moon type of thing. But E.J. writes a piece in the Washington Post today with which your Maximum Leader completely agrees. Like E.J. enjoins us to do, “Don’t Spin the Civil War.” The money quote:

After the war, in one of the great efforts of spin control in our history, both [Confederate President Jefferson] Davis and [Confederate Vice President Alexander H.] Stephens, despite their own words, insisted that the war was not about slavery after all but about state sovereignty. By then, of course, slavery was “a dead and discredited institution,” [noted Civil War historian James] McPherson wrote, and to “concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep 4 million people in slavery would not confer honor on their lost cause.”

It is all about slavery. Lets not forget that.

Oh yeah, and about that whole Haley Barbour thing from last week (Clicky here to read more about Barbour’s “Citizens Councils” comments), your Maximum Leader thinks it will torpedo any chance of Barbour becoming President of the US any time soon. He may still have a fighting chance in the primaries; but your Maximum Leader thinks he could be done before he got started.

FYI - Some well-connected Republican party types your Maximum Leader knows have maintained that Barbour was going to be the dark horse candiate in the 2012 campaign. They cite Barbour’s access to big money and his success in fundraising as support for this belief. Your Maximum Leader still thinks that the Republican nominee will be Mitt Romney in 2012. If the economy stays crappy, and all signs point towards the economy staying crappy; then Romney can run on economic issues (his strength) and downplay the social-conservative creds needed to win primaries.

Carry on.