House Majority Whip Steve Scalise
As Republicans race to do damage control on House Majority Whip Steve Scalise having spoken to a white supremacist group in 2002, the
New York Times offers a hot take explaining how Scalise came to make that particular speech. See, it's not that he's personally a racist—far from it! the guy hardly even seems southern!—it's just that he's so ambitious and personable that
he'll talk to anyone. Really. That's the defense:
“He builds relationships like no one I’ve ever seen,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, the chief deputy to Mr. Scalise, who as whip is the third-ranking House Republican. “He’s an Italian from New Orleans, there is a cultural expectation that you build friendships.”
Or, as the
Times article makes clear, if you're as incredibly ambitious a politician as Scalise most definitely is, you better build friendships. That's how a guy who wanted to run for Congress in 1999 and then in 2004 but was told to wait his turn has subsequently risen to third in House Republican leadership after only being elected to Congress in 2008.
He will go anywhere, and talk to anyone, Mr. Scalise’s friends and allies say, and that at least in part is what led him to address a group of white supremacists affiliated with David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, at the Best Western Plus Landmark Hotel in Metairie, La., a dozen years ago.
And then two years later, in 2004, as a state legislator, Scalise
voted against making Martin Luther King Day a holiday. But don't worry! Not. A. Racist. Just very friendly and willing to pander, including to avowed racists. If he thinks they might help him get ahead, anyway.
It would make a great slogan for his next campaign: "Steve Scalise. He's not personally a racist, but if you are, how can he get your vote?"
