“David Duke Without the Baggage”
Some thoughts on the Speaker contest.
I heard the title phrase sometime in the past (I cannot remember precisely where or when) and was reminded of it again via John Oliver’s program last Sunday. It is all over social media and the news at the moment (for example), especially now that US Representative Steve Scalise has been chosen as the ostensible next Speaker of the House (yes, we’ll see). I was curious as to its origin, as most stories just used the word “reportedly” (or the like) in terms of attribution. I found what I think is the original source in a 2014 NYT article: Much of David Duke’s ’91 Campaign Is Now in Louisiana Mainstream.
Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana political reporter and columnist for the past 20 years, first with The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and now The Advocate of Baton Rouge, recalled her first meeting with Mr. Scalise.
“He was explaining his politics and we were in this getting-to-know-each-other stage,” Ms. Grace said. “He told me he was like David Duke without the baggage. I think he meant he supported the same policy ideas as David Duke, but he wasn’t David Duke, that he didn’t have the same feelings about certain people as David Duke did.”
I have to admit, I am not sure that this report is sufficient to justify the various headlines and references I have seen. Still, it isn’t like there aren’t real problems, as per this 2014 Politico piece about a 2002 speech, Scalise: I ‘regret’ speech to white supremacy group. This incident has also been raised in the context of the pending vote for Scales.
It seems fair to include the following attempt at what seems an informed view of the situation by political scientist D. Stephen Voss, Saddling Steve Scalise with David Duke’s baggage. It is, no doubt, more soberly evenhanded than many might want at the moment. Still, I found it and it seems relevant, so I have shared.
Please note, I am not attempting to relieve Scalise of his own baggage, just trying to determine how seriously to take this particular bit of information. On the one hand, I can’t find a place wherein he has denied saying it. On the other, we are talking here about a remembered decades-old pronouncement.
Keep in mind that part of why I was curious is that I actually thought it possible that Scalise was on the record saying such a thing and the fact that I thought it was possible is, to my mind, a serious indictment of the current state of the GOP.
And while we are talking indictments of the party, the fact that Scalise seems to be the less offensive choice is because the alternative was Jim Jordan. And both of them make McCarthy (who demonstrated himself to be dishonest and utterly self-serving) almost like a good choice.
The GOP is not exactly sending giants to the floor.
Meanwhile, Politico reports: Steve Scalise’s celebration on pause.
And while Hamilton references are no longer cool, I can’t help but note that Scalise does not have the votes.
“I just don’t think Steve’s got the votes,” Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) told reporters after huddling with his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus on Wednesday afternoon. Moore had left the GOP’s internal elections planning to vote for Scalise as speaker on the floor.
But he said he changed his mind after other conservatives argued that Scalise was a “rubber stamp for McCarthy.” Moore said he plans to support Jordan on the floor.
Meanwhile, MTG is all class and full of deep reasoning about her vote (via the Insider): Marjorie Taylor Greene won’t support her party’s choice for House speaker because he has cancer.
“I like Steve Scalise, and I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress,” Greene wrote on Twitter. “We need a Speaker who is able to put their full efforts into defeating the communist democrats and save America.”
It is known that all communist fighters ought be cancer free.
The whole thing is (and I hate to get too technical, as I know sometimes readers feel I get too esoterically academic at times) a shitshow.
To be honest, all of this underscores that we have a clear multi-party system in the US that is being constrained and forced into two containers. The GOP is, without any doubt, at least two parties at the moment, one that is more traditionally conservative and one that is reactionary. But the structure of the system forces them into a coalition that all the constraints of the system make impossible to break. To put that another way: the cost of defecting from the coalition is high because it threatens renomination and, moreover, there is no viable place to go.
To flesh that out for a second. If I am a member of the GOP House caucus who wants to buck all this nonsense I likely risk being primaried. If I decide I want to just exit the Republican Party but stay in politics, I am doomed because the Democrats aren’t going to have me, and there are no viable other parties to join. As I have noted before, that means that the reactionaries in the GOP get amplified because the entire situation incentivizes finding a way to cooperate internally as opposed to working externally.
None of this is to excuse the aforementioned shitshow nor the Republican’s culpability in creating it, but rather to underscore that the structural conditions of American politics make it very difficult for it to be fixed in the short term (and I have doubts about the medium-to-long term). One can only hope that the anemic democratic remedies we have will come to bear on the party in 2024 and they will force some reevaluation of at least some of its members and voters.
Moreover, I will say again that if the Democrats get control of Congress in 2024, they have got find whatever ways they can to strengthen majority rule over minority rule. It is the only way to incentivize Republicans to behave differently.
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That a person that maintains the political positions that Scalise does is in the leadership of the party, much less speaker tells you where the center of the R party is. It is enough to make you pine for the R party of Reagan and the Bushes.
Nancy Mace has said she won’t vote for Scalise because “He appeared at a White Nationalist Conference”. Yes. She said this. Without irony.
I would tend to agree that these charges against Scalise are weak, and maybe unfair. But I’m having a lot of trouble caring if it’s unfair.
A lot of the problems in the Senate is rules, the blue slips, the holds by Tuberville and others etc.
The rules problem is largely a Sinema-Manchin problem. 2024 will likely fix the Sinema situation. Manchin’s seat is likely gone, it would need to be made up somewhere else while holding the rest of the D seats.
As for House disfunction, that will persist the rest of the term unless the R give up on a fully partisan speaker and accept some sort of power sharing, may never happen and not for a while at best.
I hate to say it but I’ve normalized this stuff.
I accept it that as long as Trump is (de facto) the Republican Party any-and-every thing can get worse. You didn’t like Kevin? Don’t worry, a few days or months of Steve or Jim and you’ll miss the gentle dysfunction of the McCarthy Speakership.
Fun Fact: back in the mid/late 90’s he briefly dated a friend of mine. He was a sleazy creep then, and I’ve seen nothing from him since to change that opinion.
Saying he’s Duke without the baggage, instantly burdens him with that baggage.
Unfortunately he’s being smarter than Kevin was. He’s trying to herd his cats* to vote decisively on the first ballot, rather than resuming the never ending clown show on the floor of the House.
*Apologies to all the cats who’ve ever lived.
… in a Fuck Factory
I’m very gratified to read that you describe the Republicans as being two parties shoehorned into one. That’s what I’ve been thinking the last week. Of course, I’ve been reading you for several years now…
Steve Scalise was shot by a Democrat in the Republican Baseball insurrection.
The Democrats and the media pretended it was an attack on all Congresspersons.
James Hodgkinson’s battle cry “FOR HEALTHCARE!!!!!”
@gVOR10:..I’m having a lot of trouble caring if it’s unfair.
What does fair have to do with anything in life?
@Paul L.:
So you are saying it was not an attack on any Congress Member who happened to be at the game but a targeted attack on Scalise to prevent this very thing from happening, his becoming the next speaker of congress in the year 2023? Kind-0f like when Skynet sent back a terminator to prevent John Connor from being born and becoming the resistance leader in the future. Whelp, like the terminator, the attack on Scalise failed and here we are today with the possibility of his becoming the next Speaker of the House.
You are one funny dude Paul.
@Jon: “Fun Fact: back in the mid/late 90’s he briefly dated a friend of mine. He was a sleazy creep then, and I’ve seen nothing from him since to change that opinion.”
It would be nice if the Republican party weren’t so awful that we could immediately assume which of these men you’re talking about without him being named…
@inhumans99:
The Republican Baseball insurrection was an attack on Democracy by a Democrat that was focused on silencing Republicans.
@Paul L.:
Was it really? Can you really call something an insurrection of it was just one deranged guy?
The ads for 2024 are going to write themselves.
Trump on Camera: “Hezbollah are really smart.”
Nancy Mace on Camera: “Steve Scalise attended a White Supremacist gathering”.
Steve Scalise: “I’m David Duke without the baggage.”
Ken Buck on Camera: “I can’t vote for Scalise or Jordan because they believe the election was stolen from Trump.”
George Santos on Camera: “I’m totally innocent.”
Damn….
@Paul L.: I don’t think you will find a single person here who endorses that shooting or thinks it was justified in any way. I doubt you can find more than a few hundred people in the whole country who would endorse it. (I’d say none, but there’s always someone. Always.)
You will find many many more who think the insurrection of Jan 6 was totally justified, because the election was stolen. And you want to make these two things equivalent? Change the subject? Show your support for Scalise as Speaker?
I’m not seeing your point.
I’m not a Steve Scalise fan by any means, but I think he’s probably the best Republicans have at the moment. Of course, a fair fraction of the caucus appears to be quite content with shutting down everything and letting everything go to crap if they don’t get their way, in spite of the fact that they don’t control two of the three branches of the government.
I suspect some would be happy if the government never got funded again. How do you feel about this?
@Jay L Gischer: I disagree that the Republicans are two parties. Trump has something like a 50-point lead in the primary over the next candidate down below him.
We are not going to let them weasel out from having elected and continuing to support Trump. That’s what a Republican is – a Trump Supporter – with everything that entails.
You’ll also note that none of the “responsible” Republicans are mentioned as potential House Speaker candidates. The candidates are two anti-democratic radicals who voted against recognizing the electoral votes, for example.
The Republican party is unified under Crazy.
@Paul L.: The Oklahoma Federal Building was blown up by a Republican.
The Republicans and the media pretended it was an attack on all Americans – because it was.
You’re really, really, really reaching here.
@Jay L Gischer:
I’m inclined to give the troll an itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie break.
After all, there are so few instances of Democratic violent malfeasance, that the deplorables would naturally embrace them in their bosom.
@Tony W: But of course, as I keep trying to point out, the shared bucket of all being under the same label and only being able to have a chance at forwarding one’s goals induces a great deal of going along.
But, I would note, the evidence of fractionalization of the party is obvious, as GOP support is split, as you yourself note.
As I really would love everyone to understand, the prevailing conditions of the political game shape behaviors. It simply isn’t just pure preferences competing for power all manifesting in obvious and distinct ways.
Throw on top of it all that mass behavior is not easy to nail down in terms of pure motives.
@Tony W: I would also note that pointing out that the GOP has at least two factions that would, under another system, result in two parties is not an attempt to absolve either group from the responsibility of supporting Trump.
I continue to think that too many readers take any attempt at being analytical as being an attempt to absolve blame or ignore malfeasance. This is not the case.
@Tony W:
Please don’t gaslight me. I was there.
@Kathy:
Like Waukesha Christmas parade, Draw Mohammad and Salman Rushdie attacks against Islamophobia.
@Paul L.: “Like Waukesha Christmas parade, Draw Mohammad and Salman Rushdie attacks against Islamophobia.”
Keep repeating to yourself: “Subject, verb, object, that’s how you make a sentence” and maybe you can type something that makes sense.
@Paul L.: “Wah.” Jeebus, you guys are the biggest snowflakes ever. Everything is all about you, isn’t it?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Just following in the steps of the ADL, SPLC and Meidastouch.
That is some serious projection and Whataboutism defending leftwing violence.
No wonder this blog hates Andy Ngo for exposing Antifa.
@Paul L.: Perhaps it would be useful to read the post. It isn’t about political violence at all.
@wr: And he keeps using quotations as though they are self-explanatory. He requests “Please don’t gaslight me. I was there” and then presents a quote by Bill Clinton as if it singlehandedly refutes Tony W’s assertion, “(The Oklahoma Federal Building was blown up by a Republican.
The Republicans) and the media pretended it was an attack on all Americans – because it was.” [elided portion enclosed in parentheses]
This is not the way argument works, Paul. When you write to an audience, it’s wise to explain why the source performs the rhetorical task that you think it does. This feature may well be more important than “Subject, verb, object, that’s how you make a sentence” because if your audience doesn’t make the same connection that you did, your audience won’t understand why you think
Tony W (in this case) is trying to gaslight you.
And yes, I understand that audiences may well be deliberately obtuse; I’ve noted to my students many times that my ability to deliberately misunderstand what they meant is unrivaled among teachers I’ve met. It doesn’t matter because it’s unwise to assume that an audience* can read your mind.
*especially over distance and with a time lag (and particularly when it’s your mind you want them to read)–just sayin’
ETA: One of my mentors in grad school used to say that persuasive writing needs at least equal portions of source data and writer explaining what the data means. Good advice!
Hey, Paul L—- have you ever heard about reading the goddamn article and sticking to the subject?
As it is, you’re starting to sound like one of those bozos who is convinced that the CIA is trying to brainwash him by sending radio signals via his dentures.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Post is about Steve Scalise.
@Paul L.:
Straw Man Alert …..
We (here on OTB) hate Andy Ngo? For what?
For being an acolyte of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe?
For authoring a book that ‘exposed’ Antifa as being a danger to America despite it being the ineffectual force that it really is? That is, unless YOU believe that the January 6th insurrection was an Antifa’s false flag operation.
For Ngo’s claim to fame? Largely the result of a 2019 incident in Portland, where Antifa activists threw a vegan milkshake at him? By the way, at the time Andy claimed the milkshake contained concrete.
@al Ameda:
I, for one, am terribly disappointed at the troll’s mind reading skills. Suddenly I’m supposed to hate a man I’d never heard of before? I don’t even recall this Ngo person ever being mentioned here.
He may think we’re all republicans or something.
@al Ameda:
I’m not convinced vegan milkshakes don’t contain concrete.
@Paul L.: an armed society is a polite society, Paul. The deranged man was simply exercising 2nd Amendment solutions. He was making the America that Republicans want.
Oops! 🙁
What plan are we on now? J? K? L?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
For a moment, it felt like April 1st had arrived prematurely.