House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R, LA) spoke, a dozen years ago, to a white supremacist group founded by KKK-er David Duke. He did this as a state legislator on the stump and speaking to any group willing to listen in an effort to push his then pending state tax legislation. There’s nothing in his record since, no behavior since, to indicate he agrees with the group’s or Duke’s “principles;” Scalise has, in fact, explicitly repudiated them.

Yet this speech is being touted as a serious distraction to the new Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.

On what basis, though, is it a distraction? How many Republican votes are lost to this “distraction” from the 247 about to appear in the House? How many Republican votes are lost from the 54 in the Senate?

What bills under consideration, what bills being readied for consideration in the next two years, will not be brought to votes because of this “distraction?” There’s no distraction here.

The “distraction” is entirely manufactured: the minority party Democrats are desperate to change the subject away from the conservative, nationally beneficial legislation that’s likely to be passed over these next two years, and away from the conservative, nationally beneficial reversal of Democrat damage done over the preceding six years. The NLMSM is desperate to not have to report on the successes of those legislative efforts or on the message being sent to Americans by President Barack Obama’s vetoes of those legislations.

The minority party is willing to be racist in its desperation to change that subject, just as it’s been willing to be racist all along in its blind opposition to anything Republican.