Chicago Tribune Editorial Board: GOP Whip Steve Scalise should step down from leadership position. Chicago Cubs minor league team knew more than Scalise

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Chicago Cubs minor league team Iowa Cubs knew more than Scalise.

12/20/14, "Scalise should step down from GOP leadership," Chicago Tribune Editorial Board

"Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, says he made an innocent mistake in speaking to a white supremacist conference in 2002. How was he to know that the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) was a collection of racists and neo-Nazis?

"For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is insulting and ludicrous," says Scalise, who was a state representative at the time. "I spoke to any group that called, and there were a lot of groups calling." Why, he even spoke to the League of Women Voters, even though its "a pretty liberal group." Scalise says he lacked the staff to vet organizations like EURO and "was without the advantages of a tool like Google" because "those tools weren't available back then."

Tuesday, Speaker John Boehner admitted Scalise "made an error in judgment, and he was right to acknowledge it was wrong and inappropriate." But Boehner said he "has my full confidence as our whip" and would remain in that position.

That's not good enough. Peter Wehner, who has been an adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and an aide to President George W. Bush, said the obvious on Twitter: "The party of Lincoln shouldn't have as its #3 a keynoter at a white supremacist convention." Scalise needs to step down from his leadership post, or House Republicans need to remove him.

His denials are pretty hard to believe. In the first place, Google and other search engines were widely used in 2002. The nature of the group was apparent even to the minor-league Iowa Cubs. In town to play the New Orleans Zephyrs, they decided to stay at a different hotel because of the nature of the gathering at the suburban Best Western Landmark — which publicly disassociated itself from EURO.

In the second, Scalise didn't need the Internet to know what he was dealing with. Former Ku Klux Klan leader and Louisiana state legislator David Duke, who founded EURO, says Scalise was invited by Duke's campaign manager, Kenny Knight. "Kenny knew Scalise, Scalise knew Kenny," Duke told The Washington Post. "They were friendly."

Knight says Scalise accepted the invitation because they were neighbors. "Steve knew who I was, but I don't think he held it against me," he told The New Orleans Times-Picayune.

It's pretty clear that Scalise saw some potential political benefit from hobnobbing with a crowd of hard-core bigots. In 1999, he had tried to appeal to Duke's supporters by indicating he shared many of their concerns: "The voters in this district are smart enough to realize that they need to get behind someone who not only believes in the issues they care about, but also can get elected. Duke has proven that he can't get elected, and that's the first and most important thing."

Electability was not, and is not, the most important thing about David Duke. His anti-Semitic, white supremacist beliefs are. Scalise probably doesn't share those views: Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., who is black, said, "I don't think Steve Scalise has a racist bone in his body." In 2004, when Duke was considering a race for an open House seat long held by the GOP, Scalise said, "David Duke is an embarrassment to our district, and his message of hate only serves to divide us."

But that didn't stop him from accepting a 2008 campaign contribution from Knight. The trouble with Scalise is not that he is a racist. It's that he is more than willing to indulge white bigots and their sentiments when it suits his political needs.

By playing footsie with this group, Scalise has disqualified himself from a position of leadership in a party that needs to do a better job of understanding and addressing the suspicions it arouses among many minority Americans." via Free Rep.
 
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