Via Bloodless Coup, I see Political Wire is reporting that Ryan Lizza of The New Republic is about to put George Allen’s ugly racial history on the national radar screen:

Political Wire received an advance copy of a New Republic profile of Sen. George Allen (R-VA) in which author Ryan Lizza finds many of Allen’s high school classmates surprised that he’s considering running for president because of the racist tendencies he displayed as a teenager. They say he “plastered the school with confederate flags” and drove a red Mustang with a confederate flag on the front. Then Lizza got a copy of Allen’s high school yearbook:

I stared closely at Allen’s smirk in his photo, weighing whether his old classmates were just out to destroy him. And then I noticed something on his collar. It’s hard to make out, but then it becomes obvious. Seventeen-year-old George Allen is wearing a Confederate flag pin.

When confronted with this evidence, Allen sent an email through an aide with this explanation: “When I was in high school in California, I generally bucked authority and the rebel flag was just a way to express that attitude.”

Wow. George W. Bush has many, many faults, but one of his few positive legacies is moving the GOP away from Confederate iconography and old-style race-baiting. Regardless of whether Allen has changed, his election would be a step backward for Republicans and the country.

For more on Allen’s history on race, read my post from last May on the subject.