In the wake of the revelation that Republican House Whip Steve Scalise once spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002, Bloomberg Politic’s Dave Weigel said on Twitter that the Democratic Party “gets more leeway” in race scandals.
Weigel began by chastising Republicans who kept bringing up former Democratic Majority Leader Robert Byrd– a leader in the Ku Klux Klan in his youth– thinking that it would make the Scalise scandal go away:
If we shout “Robert Byrd” 10 more times this news cycle will have never happened https://t.co/76bPXLQe5t
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) December 30, 2014
When pressed by The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney, Weigel agreed there was a double-standard at play.
@daveweigel Do you disagree that GOP and Dems are held to different standards? Seems self-evident to me.
— Timothy P Carney (@TPCarney) December 30, 2014
@TPCarney I agree, but the parties don’t exist in vacuums. The party with 90% black support gets more leeway on race scandals.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) December 30, 2014
Weigel did note in Scalise’s defense that Democratic Mayor of New York Bill de Blasio once spoke at an event honoring Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe.
All I’m saying; I don’t think politics is ready for “guy was in same room as monsters” to be a firing offense http://t.co/89webB8dw4
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) December 30, 2014