Ellison to Head DNC?

Scott Johnson writes at Powerline:

In a delicious coda to the defeat of Lady Clinton in the election on Tuesday, Minneapolis Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison has emerged as a leading contender to take the helm of the Democratic National Committee. He hasn’t yet announced his bid, but he has won the support of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (from the Senate’s Marxist subcaucus, no surprise) as well as prospective Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (surprise!).

I’m doubtful that Ellison is the man to lead the Democrats out of the wilderness. To the extent that may be true, I hope they bring him on. Let them stamp Keith Ellison’s face on the leadership of the national Democratic Party.

Revisiting a favorite subject earlier this fall, I gave a talk that I titled The Secret History of Keith Ellison. The title was facetious. Ellison’s history only became “secret” when he ran for Congress in 2006 and staked his campaign on three lies about his involvement with the Nation of Islam. I recounted and recalled Ellison’s “secret history” in the Weekly Standard articles “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” and “The Ellison elision.”

Yet Ellison’s history as an active member and local leader of the Nation of Islam remains a deep secret to Ellison’s constituents in the Fifth District (Minneapolis and inner ring suburbs). He blatantly lied about it when he was running in the competitive four-way DFL primary in the summer of 2006. He suppressed it in his 2014 memoir, My Country, ‘Tis of Thee. Indeed, he presented himself as a critic of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Speaking of Farrakhan, Ellison writes in his memoir: “He could only wax eloquent while scapegoating other groups.” Ellison writes of the Nation of Islam itself: “In the NOI, if you’re not angry in opposition to some group of people (whites, Jews, so-called ‘sellout’ blacks), you don’t have religion.”

He should know. He was speaking from his own personal experience in the cult….

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