'David Duke without the baggage' to run for House majority leader

by Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Friday, Sep. 25, 2015 Friday, Sep. 25, 2015 at 8:44:34am PDT

no image description available — Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)

Newly elected House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) speaks to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington June 19, 2014. House of Representatives Republicans on Thursday chose an ally of Speaker John Boehner for the number 2 job in the chamber and, in a vi

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)

Speaker John Boehner is resigning in large part because his House Republican caucus is in ungovernable disarray. Which means the leadership elections to replace him and whoever moves up to replace him should be enormous fun of the sort that depletes world popcorn stockpiles. One big move on that front is that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise reportedly plans to run for majority leader.

If you can't quite place the name Steve Scalise, I'll make it easy for you: He's the member of House Republican leadership who spoke to a David Duke-founded white supremacist group in 2002, and before and after that accumulated quite the record of racially suspect votes in the state legislature. Despite those revelations, he remained a member in good standing of Republican leadership, and now:

House staff members, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that Scalise is preparing a run for majority leader.
That means likely candidates for House speaker are current Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who has been leading a coalition of conservative members insisting that Boehner and other GOP leaders take a hard line on defunding Planned Parenthood, even it means a government shutdown.

It's too bad Scalise isn't really going for it by running for speaker, but still—a serious candidate for majority leader who used to bill himself as "David Duke without the baggage."