Its no secret that Slabbed’s arrival on the local media scene included copious stops in Bucktown covering the Aaron Broussard political corruption scandal. Naturally my email inbox started going into somewhat of overdrive yesterday afternoon after the disclosure on Cen Lamar that Scalise had spoken to David Duke’s white supremacist group back in 2002. Cen Lamar is a hard left democratic resource run by Lamar White Jr, locally known as unabashed left wing partisan but who is also a blogging superstar because of his high quality online work. Since then Lamar’s story was picked up by the WaPo and all hell has broken loose.
Before I get to a sampling of the sentiment I’d like to remind people that Slabbed is the only blog close enough to the Bucktown political establishment to nab pictures of Senator David Vitter’s legs thus what people are telling me is literally coming from inside the family so to speak and unlike the portrayal of Buckown’s populace in the national media as being a bunch of racist hicks it is both rich and highly nuanced.
First off a disclosure, I like Steve Scalise and Slabbed is favorably disposed to the man editorially and I’m not ashamed to admit it as he embodies most everything I expect from a Congressman in that I think he has profoundly committed to looking out for the people that elected him. It is the same calculus that attracted me to Gene Taylor and in fact it was an insurance forum in 2010 here on the Coast that drove home how committed Scalise was to his own people. To set things up he came to an insurance forum sponsored by a Democrat and actually shared panel space with insurance company executives, a bunch that after Hurricane Katrina had been compared to child molesters.
For me it was a defining moment because Scalise could have taken the opportunity that so many Republicans had before him in genuflecting before big business and begin shining the shoes of the Insurance execs in order to collect the campaign cash given out by the industry. Instead he blasted them for what they had done after the Hurricane to the people down here. Continue reading “Steve Scalise on my mind……”