Steve Scalise (R-LA)
How much lasting damage will his 2002 speech to a white supremacist organization do to House Majority Whip Steve Scalise's career? The answer isn't clear yet, but the Louisiana Republican is doing his best to
limit the damage without doing anything meaningful like offering a full and sincere apology or backing policies that would undo white supremacist goals.
What Scalise is willing to do: meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights leaders. That includes CBC Chair G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat, and Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League.
What Scalise is not willing to do: commit to any concrete actions showing that his goals really do differ from those of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization. Scalise has been asked:
... to continue regular meetings with civil rights leaders on voting rights and criminal justice policies and coordinate meetings with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). They also asked Scalise to speak on the House floor to disavow Duke’s European-American Unity and Rights Organization, the extremist group that Scalise had addressed in 2002.
But so far, Scalise won't even commit to going to Selma, Alabama, next month for the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights marches there, never mind building support for Voting Rights Act fixes. Seriously, we're supposed to believe this guy never intended to speak to a white supremacist group and really regrets it? Let's remember as a Louisiana state legislator the
things he voted against included hate crimes legislation, making Martin Luther King Day a holiday, and the state offering an
apology for slavery, and now, under pressure over the fact that he spoke to a David Duke-affiliated white supremacist group, he can't bring himself to say he'll go to Selma to honor the civil rights battles of a half century ago.
Scalise's path is his own business, but is this really what Republican donors want to associate themselves with? Is this really the statement the House Republican caucus wants to make about who will lead it? I guess we'll see.