What the GOP needs is more Steve King, says nobody but Steve King.
The problem all Republican presidential candidates will have to navigate before their runs in 2016 is that they will all be having to run their campaigns by the likes of people like rabidly anti-immigrant Iowa Rep. Steve King in order to garner his blessings, and thereby the blessings of the far-right base that treats him as a serious person. Toward this end Steve King is planning his very own presidential summit, an event in which all prospective Republican contenders are invited to come tell Steve King and his fans
why they ought to be president.
"It'll be an event that all the nation stops and looks at," King told The Des Moines Register in a telephone interview Monday. "What gets said and done, some of those things will be driving the conversation in the country."
The inaugural Iowa Freedom Summit will be in Des Moines on Saturday, Jan. 24, more than a year from the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. King's co-host is Citizens United, a conservative organization best known for influencing campaign finance in this country.
Three Republicans who are seriously weighing 2016 presidential bids are already booked as headline speakers for the summit, which will have no cost to attend: Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.
Those are just the "confirmed" speakers; all the others have been invited as well. So just a few months from now the Republican sparring will begin in earnest as all the people who dream of becoming the newest and most far-right president possible come to craft a sales pitch that they think will sell to ... Steve King supporters. Not just Iowa Republicans, but Iowa Republicans who look to Steve Freaking King as role model.
I wonder how the rest of King's party feels about that.