Always flank to the right

In a little noticed event a few weeks back, the pile of Koch-ish SuperPac money in Rob Maness's possession launched a series of strange radio ads threatening Steve Scalise for not trying harder to use the Cromnibus vote to scuttle Obamacare.

A group calling itself Senate Conservatives Action is sponsoring the ad and similar ones against Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in their respective districts. The group’s affiliate, the Senate Conservatives Fund, spent nearly a half-million dollars on behalf of Senate candidate Rob Maness, who got 14 percent of the primary vote then quickly endorsed Cassidy against Landrieu in the runoff.

Now it’s suggesting that someone might come after Scalise the next time he runs.

“Tell him to stop cutting deals with President Obama and start fighting for us,” the announcer says, as he helpfully repeats Scalise’s office phone number. “Let him know that if he doesn’t start listening, you will work to bring him home.”

The ad appears to be part of a concerted, if tone-deaf, effort to keep Scalise in line. Also surfacing this week was a story about Maness — who’s trying to stay in the game by founding a new super PAC and who (wink, wink) just happens to reside in Scalise’s district — on a website founded by the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart. 

Who knows what Maness is up to. The dude is a nut.  But it's interesting to see that someone thinks the "running room" in the First Louisiana Congressional District is to the right of Steve Scalise.  Today, Maness released a statement about Scalise's little David Duke problem.  Naturally, he blamed Obama.

"As Congressman Scalise has already conceded - attending this event was a mistake. I think we are all currently taking him at his word that this was an isolated incident that happened some 12 years ago," Maness said.

He added that if that's true, "this is clearly an orchestrated attack designed to distract" from the real issues, including "fighting back against President Obama's executive amnesty, correcting a weak and feckless Foreign Policy and stopping the massive expansion of government growth and spending."