According to an article in the Huffington Post, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is considering a run for president in 2016.
The article cites a report in Newsmax saying that King is supposedly receiving a lot of encouragement from friends to run. And his primary reason for considering a run? National defense. He, apparently, has been critical of those Republicans currently considering a presidential bid, especially Rand Paul, saying they do not take national defense seriously and are just a bunch of isolationists. (How he thinks that anyone caring seriously about an issue that will have significant consequences on the country, long-term, could be helpful in a Republican primary of any sort any where, is beyond me (further proof of the fantasy land that he, himself, lives in, perhaps?))
Here's the Huffington Post article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
This would be great news, in my opinion, for several reasons.
First, King is one of those Republicans with a “moderate” image. However, like with almost all so-called “moderate” Republicans, they almost always enable even the nuttiest of nut-jobs in their party and rarely, if ever, actually stand up to them. They are, basically, tools for their Republican majority, for the most part. Most Republican moderates are able to stake out a moderate image by ensuring they find one or more pieces of nut-job legislation to oppose, or Democratic legislation to support. Unfortunately, they usually do this on pieces of legislation where their vote will not matter (will not affect the outcome either way), so they can, disingenuously, go back home and create the illusion with voters that they are almost sane, unlike their fellow Republicans. (King did recently stand up to his fellow Republican crackpots who wanted to deny Sandy relief to folks in his district. This probably played well back home (and, perhaps, may have given him enough of an ego massage to start hearing a voice saying..."President King...hmmm has a nice ring to it." ))
So, the good news here is that King, like most representatives running for president, would likely be giving up his seat should he run. That would finally give Democrats a chance to win this seat if they were to field a strong candidate. King represents New York's 2nd Congressional District, covering part of Long Island. Long Island used to be a solid red part of New York State, reliably Republican. However, with the never-ending march to the right by the national Republican Party, Long Island's actually become more and more competitive for Democrats over the past decade or so.
This also indicates to me that King may be considering retiring from Congress regardless of his decision. The mere fact of him even giving voice to such a notion three years out, and when he would actually face a reelection race between now and then, makes me wonder if he's had about enough of Congress.
More importantly, King could actually serve a very useful role, for a change, by wreaking some havoc in the Republican Party. He would, finally, have a useful purpose, in other words. Raising the legitimate question...that Republicans don't care about real, grown-up issues, but are obsessed with extraneous things that most working-class folks don't see as all that important, would be very helpful to the country as a whole. Of course, it would probably not be all that helpful to the Republican Party or the person who ends up obtaining their nomination in 2016. And, of course, it couldn't hurt Democrats to have someone running in the Republican primaries pointing out how out of touch with reality all of the rest of them are (even if the one doing the pointing is just a tad bit detached from reality himself).
(Haven't seen this reported elsewhere here...so thought it would be a good idea to post this for everyone's enjoyment.)
12:39 PM PT: An update: Here's a new story in the Huffington Post, with video of King saying that Hillary Clinton would destroy any Tea Party Republican nominee:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
As a New Yorker who admires Hillary Clinton, worked as a volunteer on her first campaign, voted against her in the primary during her reelection in 2006 (due to her support of the U.S. invasion of Iraw) and supported Barack Obama in 2008...if any Republican thinks that she will destroy any of their Tea Party candidates, that's almost reason enough for me to support her in 2016. Anything we can do to keep one of those nutjob tea baggers as far away from the Oval Office as possible would suit me.