Two weeks after promising an “adult” conversation about Confederate flags, House Republicans have made little public headway in solving the thorny political issue.
House Speaker John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican who halted action on spending bills and issued the call for talks, brushed aside questions about the issue last week, saying only that conversations are continuing and that Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, was his point man on the matter.
A spokesman said Mr. McCarthy hasn’t had any formal discussions on the topic.
“He’s been talking to members informally. He met with John Lewis a couple of weeks ago,” McCarthy spokesman Matt Sparks said. “But there’s no update. There’s nothing to report on the interior bill or the amendments that are still pending.”
The Confederate flag ensnared Republicans in a difficult debate after the shooting at a Charleston, South Carolina, church last month. Photos surfaced of the man accused of the shooting holding a Confederate battle flag, and he was connected to racist groups.
The South Carolina Legislature moved to take down a Confederate flag that flew on the Statehouse grounds at a war memorial. Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, signed the bill July 9 — the very day that House Republicans had set up votes on protecting the flag at federal cemeteries and national parks.
Worried about the optics, Republican leaders canceled the votes and Mr. Boehner called for discussions, saying he had ideas about whom to involve in the conversations. The issue has since disappeared behind closed doors.
This month’s fight flared up on a bill to fund the National Park Service. Democrats successfully added amendments to halt sales of Confederate merchandise in park gift shops and to ban Confederate flags from decorating graves in parks.
But after the House accepted the amendments, some Republican lawmakers balked and demanded a new vote. Faced with that prospect, Mr. Boehner and Mr. McCarthy pulled the parks spending bill and promised a national conversation that would lead to a grand compromise.
Mr. Lewis, an icon of the 1960s civil rights movement, waved off a reporter’s request to talk about the issue last week.
Democrats have their eye on more than Confederate emblems in national parks.
Rep. James E. Clyburn, South Carolina Democrat, introduced a resolution to urge states displaying the Confederate flag in public places and including it on license plates to remove such imagery in remembrance of the victims of the South Carolina shooting.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi Democrat, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, introduced similar resolutions to ban the Confederate battle flag from state flags across the country.
Last week, Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Clyburn offered to stop fighting over Confederate battle flags in parks if Republicans agreed to a rewrite of the Voting Rights Act.
That landmark law was dealt a blow in 2013 when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional Section 4, a decades-old formula that required some states to submit any voting changes to strict federal scrutiny.
Democrats have tried to update the formula to reinvigorate the law, but their efforts have been futile.
Mr. McCarthy, though, said he is open to talking about modernizing the Voting Rights Act because the world had changed since it was written. “It’s the right time to do it,” he said.
• Anjali Shastry can be reached at ashastry@washingtontimes.com.
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