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Wow. Talk about handing your political opponents and the opponents of your political party a late Christmas gift. And I do mean “White” Christmas gift: the Republican House Majority Whip has now confirmed he spoke to a white supremecist group in 2002 associated with former KKKer David Duke. If you hear people singing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” it’s probably Democrats in Congress and Democratic strategists:
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority whip, acknowledged Monday that he spoke at a gathering hosted by white-supremacist leaders while serving as a state representative in 2002, thrusting a racial controversy into House Republican ranks days before the party assumes control of both congressional chambers.
Scalise, 49, who ascended to the House GOP’s third-ranking post this year, confirmed through an adviser that he once appeared at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO. But the adviser said the congressman didn’t know at the time about the group’s affiliation with racists and neo-Nazi activists.
“For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is insulting and ludicrous,” Scalise told the Times-Picayune on Monday night. The organization, founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, has been called a hate group by several civil rights organizations.
The news could complicate Republican efforts to project the sense of a fresh start for a resurgent, diversifying party as the new session of Congress opens next week. In the time since voters handed control of Congress to Republicans, top GOP leaders have been eagerly trumpeting their revamped image and management team on Capitol Hill.
Monday night, some Democrats were already raising questions about whether Scalise should remain in a leadership post.
Conservative commentator Eric Erickson isn’t happy, either:
Erickson was not willing to give Scalise the benefit of the doubt.
“How do you not know? How do you not investigate?” Erickson wrote on Monday. “By 2002, everybody knew Duke was still the man he had claimed not to be. EVERYBODY.”
“How the hell does somebody show up at a David Duke organized event in 2002 and claim ignorance?” Erickson asked.
The conservative writer then suggested that Scalise lose the support of House Republican leaders over his decision to speak at the 2002 event.
I suspect within a few days you’ll see some of the talking heads on Fox News, and conservative talkers defending Scalise and trying to point the finger at a Democrat, which is how our politics works: try to deflect a problem with your own political sports team by going on offense and hope no one will notice the big flaw in your political sports team. My bet: You’ll hear about Obama and Rev. Wright for the umpteenth time. And, no, it is not quite the same. David Duke was in his own (lack of) class.
P.S. They will notice.
P.S.S. And they will point out that they notice, and many not on your political sports team will agree.
The bottom line? If the GOP really wants to make a fresh start, it’ll find someone else for that post. P-e-r-i-o-d.
But someone has now spoken up in Scalise’s behalf:
Here’s an endorsement House Majority Whip Steve Scalise probably wasn’t looking for and doesn’t want. In a comment to The Huffington Post, white nationalist and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke called the Republican congressman “a fine family man and a good person.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.