It's not that Iowa Rep. Steve King (R-MelonCalvedImmigrants) is a racist or a xenophobe. He just happens to have
a career-long obsession with immigrants and how they will destroy America.
He remembers the moment, down to the exact date. During an October 10, 1996 fundraiser at Yellow Smoke Park sponsored by then-Governor Terry Branstad, a Republican, he made the speech that shaped his political future. "I was running through my topics and I said, 'And I believe English should be the official language of the state of Iowa.' And it just brought the house down. There was this huge applause," King says. "I knew how strongly I believed in it. But I didn't know how strongly they believed in it.”
And just happens to not be a stickler for the facts when it comes to warnings about their obvious predilection towards criminality.
In March 2006, King claimed the country would be safer without immigrants, arguing that every day, 12 Americans are killed by "murderous illegal aliens" and another 13 by "drunk driving illegals." Like with the "cantaloupes" claim, the numbers were fudged.
And did he mention how terrible immigrants and (cough) others are?
Since King came to Congress, his most over-the-top rhetorical outbursts include comparing immigrants to dogs, calling illegal immigration a "slow-motion terrorist attack" on the United States, claiming Al Qaeda would be "dancing in the streets" if Barack Obama was elected president, and declaring that racial profiling wasn't an issue in Ferguson, Mo., because protesters were from a single "continental origin."
But he is not a racist, and you have that on the authority of no less than the most notoriously xenophobic Republican figure since Steve King. Ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo and Steve King hit it off brilliantly in Congress, you see, and if you can't trust Tom Tancredo as a good and decent judge of who is a xenophobic race-baiting anti-all-immigrants learn-the-language they're-all-drug-dealers-or-murderers bastard and who is not, who can you trust?
"I know he does not have a racist bone in his body," the Coloradan says.
Ah, good to know. So it's not that the fellow is conspicuously obsessed with immigrants of one particular hue, and notoriously free in categorizing them as murderers, drug peddlers or dogs, and has at every turn advanced his career by sounding off on explicitly anti-immigrant themes, it is just ... that thing I said.
It's also interesting to hear that King has more than a little Richard "Dick" Cheney in him.
"Once, I dropped a pheasant in the middle of a bunch of [reporters] and they thought I shot over them. Well, I did. But the bird was up there 40 yards and, y'know, what are you gonna do?"
Yes, what
are you gonna do? It's either shoot over the heads of a gaggle of reporters or let that one damn bird go, and Steve King has never been one to let concerns over mere safety or propriety stand in the way of killing something he wants dead.
Daily Kos-endorsed Democrat and Iraq War vet Jim Mowrer is running to knock Steve King out of Congress. Chip in $3 to help make it happen.