After well over a decade of tolerating GOP Rep. Steve King’s vehement racism and alliances with international white supremacists, his fellow House Republicans finally have decided that the Iowan is both weak enough and embarrassing enough to throw to the wolves.
On Monday evening, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced that he was stripping King of all of his committee assignments for the 116th Congress. The next day, the House voted 424 to one on a resolution of disapproval over King over his interview with the New York Times last week where he asked, ‘‘White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?’’
The one dissenter wasn’t King, who unconvincingly said before the vote that he was misquoted but would support the resolution because he agreed with denouncing white supremacism. Instead, it came from Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, who is pushing for a stronger resolution to censure the Iowa Republican and argued that this measure is too weak. King is now the 11th sitting member ever officially condemned by the House and the first since 2012, when California Democrat Laura Richardson was reprimanded for pressuring her congressional staff to work on her re-election campaign.
All of this comes at a time when King, who has long been a powerful force in conservative western Iowa, is finally looking weak enough and embarrassing for Republicans to at long last do something about. As the Times’ Trip Gabriel details, King has a very long history of racism that hasn’t brought him much, if any, criticism from his party. Instead, presidential candidates have actively sought out his endorsement for years. And of course, the same Republicans who are criticizing King are now treating Donald Trump and his racism with the same kind of blissful ignorance that they’d granted to King for so long.
However, unlike Trump, King has looked a whole lot less intimidating in recent months. In November, he only held his seat 50-47 against Democrat J.D. Scholten, a win he pulled off the same day that GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds was carrying his seat 59-39. In early January, state Sen. Randy Feenstra announced he would challenge King in the primary.
King himself may be feeling the pressure. On Monday, after McCarthy stripped him of his committees, the Iowa congressman put out nearly incomprehensible statement defending himself but with one key line. King pledged to "continue to point out the truth and work with all the vigor that I have to represent 4th District Iowans for at least the next two years," which hardly makes it sound like he has the fire in his belly to try to stick around for longer than two years.
