A Georgia debate?

SO WHAT WAS Sen. Tommy Moore trying to accomplish when he backed out of an NAACP candidates forum? Was he taking black voters for granted in an effort to attract independents or Republicans who are offended by the organization? Or is it simply a matter, as his campaign says, of believing that a debate between the candidates for governor of South Carolina should occur inside the state of South Carolina?

Frankly, it doesn’t matter. He is right to decline to participate in a meeting that is being held outside the state for the sole purpose of harming the state of South Carolina.

The only reason the NAACP holds its annual convention outside the state is to comply with its tourism boycott, which is designed to apply pressure to state leaders to remove the Confederate flag from the State House grounds. We believe that’s the wrong approach.

We want the Confederate flag off the grounds of the State House as much as the NAACP does, and in fact this editorial board has been advocating on this issue since long before the organization began its boycott. But we have tried to reason with people rather than attempting to harm them. That approach helped remove the flag from its position of sovereignty on the State House dome, and could have moved us farther toward our eventual goal if the boycott weren’t out there making an extremely polarized issue even more so.

We don’t think Gov. Mark Sanford did anything wrong by accepting an invitation to the forum. We just believe that Mr. Moore made the right choice.