Scalise: "No place is perfect." MT @ProPublica: New Congress is 80% white, 80% male & 92% Christian pic.twitter.com/Buw9xZnkHL
— Billmon (@billmon1) January 5, 2015
Steve Scalise is keeping his job in the leadership, per Dave Weigel at Bloomberg, and “the GOP Thinks It’s Turned A Corner“:
… Scalise’s survival might actually mark a turning point for conservatives and the press. For most of his public life, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has been pilloried by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups because he once spoke to the Council of Conservative Citizens, and because he managed the 1996 Senate campaign that contracted a Duke-connected group for voter contact. Scalise had taken some of the same pummeling, and survived. Why?
“It’s the trump card that they’ve worn out, the race card,” said Perkins. “It’s–anybody who has spoken to any group associated with any group is like that group. And that’s not sustainable. You look at who the president has had at the White House, child molesters who’ve been at functions, who’ve raised money for him–they don’t say the president embraces that. You look at what people had said about Scalise, and I’ll say it, too: I’ve never heard him utter in public or private under a word that could be seen as a racist. Sometimes, you’re invited to speak to unfamiliar groups. Part of the whole deal in politics is persuasion.”
In other words, the GOP has succeeded in defining deviancy down.
John Boehner is keeping his job as Speaker, too, despite what Dana Milbank called “Louie Gohmert’s freak show“. Matt Kibbee at Freedomworks will have a big sad, until he can use this Triumph of the RINOs to gin up another few thousand love gifts from grateful marks small donors. You know it’s a grift because Word Salad Sarah jumped onto the snow machine bandwagon, per Weigel:
Roughly 80 minutes before the new House of Representatives assembled to vote for speaker, Sarah Palin joined the rebellion against John Boehner.
“It’s time for new energy and positive progress in Congress,” the former Alaska governor wrote in (of course) a Facebook post. “Please consider ‘Gunnin’ for Gohmert’ or going ‘Yahoo for Yoho’ when you vote for Speaker of the House today. Both Representatives are true Constitutional, commonsense conservatives who’ve proven to America they keep their promises to We the People. They know they serve America, not the power brokers in DC. “…
Goddess bless Harry Reid, he defies the haterz (& the rogue exercise machines):
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Apart from keeping a sharp eye on the Repub miscreants (always a sound strategy), what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Open Thread: Hide Your Kids & the Silverware, Congress Is Back in SessionPost + Comments (35)