Steve King's Still A White Nationalist

If, somehow, you're still uniformed as to Iowa Congressman Steve King's long, long history of public racism over the years in light of his awful tweet over the weekend that was so bad that David Duke applauded it, today King doubled down on his statement that Americans can't save the country with by having "somebody else's babies".

Rep. Steve King doubled down Monday on comments he made over the weekend in which he appeared to criticize foreigners and immigrants, drawing complaints of insensitivity on social media and from some of his Hill colleagues. 

King, a prominent Iowa Republican and a vocal advocate against illegal immigration, tweeted Sunday, "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." 

Asked by CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day" to clarify his comments, King said he "meant exactly what I said." 

"You cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else's babies. You've got to keep your birth rate up, and that you need to teach your children your values," King said, paraphrasing remarks he said he's delivered to audiences in Europe. "In doing so, you can grow your population, you can strengthen your culture, and you can strengthen your way of life." 

King said he'd like to see less of an emphasis on race in the future. 

"If you go down the road a few generations, or maybe centuries, with the inter-marriage, I'd like to see an America that is just so homogenous that we look a lot the same," he said. 

King, who was expressing support in his original tweet for far-right Dutch candidate Geert Wilders, predicted that "Europe will be entirely transformed within a half-century." 

King has long been concerned about the decline of "American culture," and said he merely wished to see immigrants better assimilate into the United States. Pressed whether he saw all Americans as equal, the Iowa congressman said their backgrounds mattered. 

"I'm a champion for Western civilization," King said, adding that all people do not contribute to American society equally. "They contribute differently to our culture and civilization."

This is literally White Nationalism Theory 101 here, that the "white race" is being wiped out by interracial couples, and that (white) American civilization is being supplanted by non-white (non) Americans who are not worthy of being considered as such and never will be.

I mean, this is actual Stormfront propaganda here, being spouted by a seven-term US Congressman. And King in particular has had a long history of this, well before the Trump era.  Josh Marshall has been covering Steve King for years at TPM. (So have I.)

Today people are apparently finding out and being terribly surprised that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a white nationalist and racist and has been that more or less openly for years. Before yesterday's paean to "culture and demographics", Steve King was saying that for every Dreamer who's a valedictorian there are a hundred running drugs. The list of similar statements is all but endless.

We've been on the King beat for years. You can go through our archives and find dozens of offensive, stupid and frequently outright racist comments from King. But there's something more specific about King. King frequently speaks in the language of white nationalists and neo-Nazis who speak of 'white genocide' and America being overrun by non-whites.

He does and he has been for years.  But here's the thing: despite this long and visible history of racism, Steve King keeps getting reelected by Iowans to represent them in Congress.

The problem isn't Steve King.  It's the people who vote for Steve King time and time again despite his racism...or specifically because of it.