So it’s looking like hard-core conservatives may be the last to let go of the Scalise scandal. Now Sean Hannity’s using it as a tire iron to club John Boehner, per this report from TPM’s Sahil Kapur:
Fox News host Sean Hannity wants Rep. Trey Gowdy to challenge John Boehner for Speaker of the House, but the South Carolina Republican says he isn’t interested.
Hannity made his thoughts known in a pair of emails to Breitbart News during a rocky week for House GOP leadership, with Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) admitting he spoke at a white supremacist gathering in 2002. Boehner and his leadership team have stood by Scalise.
“It’s time for new dynamic leadership in the House of Representatives. Trey Gowdy is my choice for speaker. He has the ability to articulate and implement the changes needed to get the country on the right path,” the Fox News host said, apparently becoming the first prominent conservative to push Gowdy, a second-term congressman who chairs the House select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks, to seek the job of Speaker.
Since the Gowdy draft ain’t going anywhere, the unlikely spectacle of Sean Hannity professing concern about racial insensitivity probably won’t last long. You have to wonder if this is the last gasp of the Scalise scandal. Maybe so, but it’s worth remembering that Scalise was 26 years old and a budding young conservative–soon to be elected to the state legislature–when David Duke was running the “race from Hell” in 1991, from a base in Scalise’s own home town of Metairie. So there could well be more out there for which industrious folk are digging.
