“Minnesota’s state flag holds great historical importance and has united us by recognizing the people and events who helped create Minnesota,” said Minnesota Republican Party Chairman David Hann. “The flag the DFL has eliminated was a version of the historic flag our regiments fought under during the Civil War. Minnesota was the first state to offer troops to the Union cause in 1861, beginning a long tradition of leading the nation in confronting injustice. The DFL quest to erase our history is repugnant and should be rejected.”

The Minnesota Republican Party urged Gov. Walz and the Minnesota Legislature to intervene and preserve the current state flag. Additionally, the party set up a website on the subject.

When asked about this topic, Gov. Walz compared these Republican efforts to “somehow saving the Confederate battle flag.” The governor added, “These are the arguments that happened with Jefferson Davis statues in Alabama.”

[Walz is an idiot. He claims that the current Minnesota state flag is “highly offensive to a large number of people,” but what they mainly object to is the history of the state and its relations to the Native American tribes that live there. The seal on the flag was the symbol under which Minnesotans marched AGAINST the Confederacy, which is also part of the rich history behind the flag. The people “offended” by it mainly appear to be academics and progressive activists. I lived there for 23 years and was politically active most of that time, and *never heard a word* about the flag being offensive, let alone broadly so.

Furthermore, the new flag design looks suspiciously like Somalia’s flag, which has created accusations of pandering to the large Somalia ex-pat community in Minneapolis. And finally, the whole flag redesign project smells like a desperate attempt by Walz to glom onto the efforts in the South to eliminate *actual* Confederate iconography in official government flags and thus to be somehow culturally relevant. — Ed]