The White House has criticized the Republican Party over the House GOP’s decision to retain Rep. Steve Scalise in the role of House Majority Leader even after controversy erupted over a 2002 speech that he may have given to members of a white supremacist group in his Louisiana district. Spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters Monday that Republicans’ “There’s not arguing that who Republicans decide to elevate into a leadership position says a lot about who, what the conference’s priorities and values are.”
The White House has hosted serial race-baiter Al Sharpton dozens of times, and has followed his cues in racially divisive controversies from the Trayvon Martin shooting to the ongoing “Black Lives Matter” protests, which have led to retaliatory violence against police across the nation. Moreover, President Barack Obama himself spent twenty years in the pews of the church of Jeremiah Wright in Chicago, enduring Wright’s racist sermons without comment or complaint, and contributing thousands of dollars to Wright’s fundraising efforts.
Whatever the flaws of the Republican Party’s decision to retain Scalise, and his decision to cling to his leadership position, the White House has no credibility whatsoever on the issue. By virtue of who it has decided “to elevate into a leadership position,” it has shown clearly what its “priorities and values are”–and those priorities and values do not include unity or better race relations. Obama himself has used racially loaded language, infamously encouraging Latino voters to vote against their “enemies”. Criticism from that source lacks any credibility.