The headline states “Steve King’s Not The Problem.” He’s not. He is a problem, but not the problem.
Oh, sure, the Republican Party removed him from all his committees so, in effect, he can only wander the halls of Congress rattling chains like the Ghost of Racists Past. This is the Congressional equivalent of gelding, and in a democracy perhaps the punishment fits the crime. But off the top of my air-conditioned head, I can think of two bigger problems.
The first is that the good folks in Iowa’s 4th (previously known as 5th) Congressional District have been voting him into office every two years since, and including, 2002. That’s eight terms. It’s not as if there’s some difference of opinion as to the height of his peaked white cap. He’s an avowed racist. He’s a white supremacist who claims not to understand why other people think white supremacists are bad. He’s been upfront about his attitudes towards blacks, Jews, Latinos, Islamists, and let’s just say they are sufficiently offensive to deny him a ranking in the Miss Congeniality race.
King opposes a woman’s right to abortion even in the cases of incest and rape, he’s opposed to stricter gun control laws, he’s a believer in the concept of “legitimate rape,” he’s in favor of organized animal fighting and he’s in favor of putting arsenic in chicken feed. PeTA must love him. King’s opposed to immigration and multiculturalism although he falsely claimed to be as “Hispanic and Latino as” then-HUD secretary (and now 2020 presidential candidate) Julian Castro. King is opposed to Planned Parenthood, food stamps, and Mexicans, and he doesn’t want Muslims to handle meat that is sold to non-Muslims.
That last one is really weird, but I don’t want to know why he feels that way.
He kept the Confederate Battle Flag of Treason in his office until two years ago, removing it only after two Iowa policepeople were shot by a fellow Confederate flag-waver. Did I mention that, during the first Civil War (a.k.a. to King’s friends, “The War Between The States”) Iowa was a Union state?
Oh, and surprise-surprise, he’s hysterically opposed to any sort of protection for, and acceptance of, LGBTQ rights.
But, Steve King is only a problem because the people of the 4th Congressional District of Iowa (Mason City, Ames, Sioux City, Fort Dodge, and other vacation paradises) keep electing him. After eight victories, you gotta think they like him. Although this year his margin was pretty slim.
However… even the electorate is not the biggest problem.
That would be the man the Electoral College decided should be our president, His Petulance King Donald the Last. As we all know – and most of us accept, at least by now, the Orange Skull acts as though he endorses damn near all of King’s policies and attitudes plus fascism, violent foreign dictators, and the lunacy of having a Justice Department that is permitted to do its job.
So if, when stripped of his authority, Congressman Steve King pointed to the most dangerous man in the world and said “ME? WHAT ABOUT HIM?” he’d be fully justified.
Republicans, on a clear day you can’t even see the high ground.
