Right, because it was actually Democrats responsible for the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws. Republicans, on the other hand, were the party of abolitionism and civil rights. So Republicans lacking a “Grand Wizard” would make sense.

Ann Curry, NBC News: “He’s not stepping down, continuing to suck the air out of the narrative the Republican party really wants to tell. Does the party now wish he would just go away?”

David Gregory, NBC News: “Well there is no, you know, grand wizard in the party right now who can really force the issue. I’ve talked to Cain’s advisers in Iowa, they think their support is still strong there, that it’s not falling. There may be cracks in the foundation according to pollsters I’m talking to, that his numbers may be starting to shift but right now core support remains there.”

So is Gregory implying that, unlike Republicans, Democrats do have a Grand Wizard?

Well, granted, David Duke spent years as a Democrat and endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. And sure, Democrats celebrated and put in a high position of authority Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who was a high-ranking Klan official still using the n-word in the 21st century.

But neither has the influence to push anyone out. Byrd may have at one point, but he’s dead now. His influence went with him to the grave.

Update: Gregory admits he was wrong.

“Wizard” remark this morning was a very poor choice of words. Did not mean to make that connection at all. Was not thinking. I apologize

I actually get what he meant. He was trying to come up with some grandiose, supreme title. And let’s fact it: Grand Wizard was created because it sounds like a grandiose, supreme title. He’s not the first to make the connection and he won’t be the last. Good on him for apologizing.