Some state Dems welcome statue purges, but Pennsylvania Dems have made a point of going the other way.
Biden’s National Park Service recently announced that it was going to trash a statue of William Penn on the site of his former home.
The National Park Service proposes to rehabilitate Welcome Park to provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors. Welcome Park was designed by the internationally acclaimed design firm Venturi & Scott Brown Associates. The park is located on the site of William Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, and is named for the ship, Welcome, which transported Penn to Philadelphia.
The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. In a separate and future effort, new exhibit panels will be installed on the south site wall to replace the Penn timeline.
The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
There was conservative outrage, which is not surprising, but there was also rapid intervention by local Dems.
“My team has been in contact with the Biden Administration throughout the day to correct this decision. I’m pleased Welcome Park will remain the rightful home of this William Penn statue — right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Penn founded,” Gov. Josh Shapiro announced.
Sen. Bob Casey also assured everyone that the statue would stay.
The National Park Service is covering its fundament by claiming that the announcement was premature and had not been properly vetted which is bureaucratic-speak for “the boss is embarrassed and disavows all responsibility”.
Philly has a lot of historic statues, buildings, etc, and before the National Park Service decided to vandalize it, Welcome Park was not too widely known even to locals. But Pennsylvania is a swing state going into an election and Dems have tried to build a more normal reputation.
Sen. Fetterman has worked hard to build an image of a moderate. So did Gov. Josh Shapiro. Is any of it real? Probably not.
A lot of lefty Dems pretended to be moderates until states tilted their way and then they let their freak flag fly.
An election year is not the time to make the Dems look like radicals and so Gov. Shapiro quickly leaned on Biden and told him that moderates and swing voters matter more than wokes right now.
Of course that just means that the statue will be removed in 2025 or 2028 or at some later date. The Left never forgets and never lets go of anything.
What the sudden reversal does show is that Dems are afraid of the political fallout from wokeness.