Conservatives are defending Rep. Steve Scalise’s speech to a white supremacist group. As usual, their arguments are full of wholes and lacking sense, but it’s much easier for them than actually condemning a racist move from one of their own. Here are the five defenses I’ve heard that made me laugh out loud:

1. But Robert Byrd!

. . .

2. But Al Sharpton!

Al Sharpton should demand royalties for the right because he is so often invoked as their racial boogeyman. Sharpton has a controversial past, and conservatives have to reach back nearly 40 years for their point with him. In the last 20 years or so, Sharpton has been far more careful with his rhetoric, which doesn’t work for the right. That’s why they have to fake video of his supporters calling for police to be shot, or condemn him for not engaging on black-on-black violence when he had done so months before.

Sharpton is not an elected official, and while he has met with President Obama, it isn’t as if Obama marches in lockstep with him on racial issues – Obama is far more cautious and far less incendiary – but details, whatever!

3. Bill Ayers!

. . .