So.. You ARE saying that the GOP chose a liar as its chairman? What a great recommendation that is!
I would say a "coward." And the only reason the GOP picks cowards is to avoid drawing negative ire from the Democrats' Department of Propaganda; also known as the mainstream news media.
They won't challenge the "facts" peddled by the lamestream lapdog liberal news media. They are always in surrender mode.
Mehlman was apologizing for something he thinks may have happened 35 years earlier, which he had no inside information on.... other than what comes from the lamestream lapdog liberal news media. Some veteran McCain-type surrender machine underling may have uttered some Desh-type "fact" to Mehlman that was really nothing more than lapdog media supposition that aged into a "fact."
This is why thinking Republicans call themselves "conservatives."
As has been pointed out in this thread, the GOP didn't make major inroads into the south until about 30 years after Jim Crow was shut down. If anything, what was responsible was the radicalization of the rest of the Democrat Party post-1972 McGovern campaign. Seriously, which party has undergone more radical transformation nation-wide since 1972?
Understanding southern thinking as I somewhat do..... if anything irked them it would have been the virtual surrender of Vietnam. Both parties bore blame for it. When more liberal Democrats came out of the era, the party was less attractive to southerners. When more conservative anti-communist Republicans arrived, they offered what southerners were looking for.