Help! Help! They're dancing!

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a knuckle-biting coward:

An Iowa Republican congressman said Friday that terrorists would be "dancing in the streets" if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency.

Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama's pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein.

"The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida ... would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror," King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.

Remember when Republicans feared truly scary things, like death?

You could hardly understand them sometimes, through their chattering teeth and over the embarrassing odors emanating from their pants, but they used to at least insist that the specter of death be the chit they'd trade things like American Values^TM like civil liberties for.

PERRspectives reminds us of the sad Republican history of pantsbrowning:

As Perrspectives detailed last year, President Bush's amen corner on Capitol Hill offered the "Give Me Death" defense of warrantless wiretapping of Americans. Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Pat Roberts (R-KS) offer case in point.

During brief comments to the press last February, Sessions referring to the rightness of Bush's domestic spying after 9/11 declared melodramatically:

"Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us."

The Republican leadership is singing from the same Karl Rove fear-mongering hymnal to justify the President's lawbreaking. On February 3rd, Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, who has stonewalled the Phase II investigation into the misuses of pre-Iraq war intelligence, similarly claimed:

"You really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead."

Roberts, who also authored a vitriolic 19-page letter defending the NSA domestic surveillance program, merely followed in the footsteps of Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on December 20, 2005:

"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

But King really raises the wuss factor to the Nth degree here, doesn't he? Now Americans can't elect our own president, for fear someone might... dance.

To be fair, though, this would be Radical Islamodancism. So there's that.

That's the new test, I guess. A Republican presidency is a success if terrorists don't kill Americans on their watch. But a Democratic presidency fails if anyone dances.

Let 'em dance. Let 'em declare anything they want. I thought if you weren't actually dead, that was a victory for us.

Apparently not enough, though. Gotta have a worldwide war on jubilation before King will be ready to commit to a clean pair of Jockeys.

The kicker is, they think Americans will think this stuff makes them sound like leaders.