The Steve Scalise Double Standard

P21NadraEnziProject 21 member Nadra Enzi, a community activist in New Orleans, had this comment about the alleged controversy involving U.S. Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) having addressed members of a white separatist group 12 years ago while serving as a state legislator:

U.S. Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA), the third highest-ranking member of the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, made a 2002 speech that is coming back to bite him with a vengeance!  While a state legislator, he spoke to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO, get it) — a group affiliated with David Duke, a Louisianan steeped in racial controversy.

So? I view this alleged controversy minus the histrionics for a couple of reasons.  Chief among them is the double standard imposed on white conservatives.

We have a president who wasn’t disqualified from running or serving despite spending around 20 years as a congregant of Reverend Jeremiah Wright — whose race-baiting on a slow day puts to shame any of the allegedly dire implications of Scalise’s comments made to a fringe group about boring tax policy .

America is only a mere 50 years or so out of its own apartheid era, so it’s not surprising if folks are still afoot spouting “euro” or “afro” attitudes.  But if Al Sharpton’s ugly record of civil rights hoaxes as well as his seemingly anti-police, anti-white, anti-Jewish and anti-American rambling hasn’t barred him from over 70 known visits to the White House, how can liberals say the Scalise story is “a big deal” with a straight face?

I notice that the local Red Cross chapter, which also had a representative speak at the 2002 EURO event, hasn’t yet been thrown under the bus.  Nor has the local sheriff’s office.  Neither has the Best Western hotel chain been targeted for a boycott for allowing the event to take place on their premises.

Need I also recite the excesses, misstatements and questionable audiences chosen by white liberals that did not cost them high office nor esteem to further underscore the breadth of this double standard?

The other major reason this episode is a non-issue to me is that the timing is nakedly political.  It smacks of a desperate desire to upset the upcoming political landscape.  Becoming the number-three man in leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives earns one serious attention and obvious enemies.  Those enemies seem to want to blunt Scalise before he can do virtually anything in the job.

If Congressman Cedric Richmond (D-LA), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and a staunch Obama supporter, says he “do[es]n’t Steve Scalise has a racist bone in his body,” ‘nuff said as far as I’m concerned.



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