The King Is Gone, Long Live The Joker

The Republicans in Iowa, tired of being represented by racist Rep. Steve King for two decades, have decided that they need an all new racist to represent them in the House in last night's Iowa primary.

State Sen. Randy Feenstra defeated incumbent Rep. Steve King in Tuesday's Republican primary for Iowa's 4th congressional district, according to the Cook Political Report.

Why it matters: King's history of racist remarks has made him one of the most controversial politicians in the country and a pariah within the Republican Party. 

House Republican leadership stripped the nine-term congressman of his committee assignments in 2019 after he questioned in an interview with the New York Times how the terms "white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization" became offensive.

The big picture: The Republican establishment coalesced around Feenstra beginning in January, when the Republican Main Street Partnership PAC became the first national GOP organization to publicly endorse and financially support him. 

Feenstra, who has consistently dominated King in fundraising, had sought to paint King as an ineffective ally to President Trump, rather than campaign on his history of white nationalist rhetoric. 

Feenstra's victory will likely move the seat into safe Republican territory for the general election in November.

Unfortunately, this does make things significantly tougher for Democratic challenger J.D. Scholten, who came close to beating King in 2018.  On the other hand, things went so badly for Republicans in Iowa in 2018 that they lost all the other districts in the state.

I'm thinking Feenstra might not be so safe after all.

The Red Purge Meets The Blue Wave

Republicans are increasingly seeing the 2020 primary as the key to getting rid of some of their more troublesome racists, criminals, and crackpots...of course all while ignoring the largest of those problems in Donald Trump.  They're stuck with Donald, but Steve King and Duncan Hunter for example are both living on borrowed time.

While GOP leaders typically stay out of primary contests, these members are getting snubbed or facing outright opposition from the party establishment. At least one member of GOP leadership — retiring Rep. Paul Mitchell of Michigan — has decided to back a primary opponent to hard-line conservative Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who was kicked off his committees for making racist remarks earlier this year.

King’s comments “reflect negatively upon Republicans and, as a result, I will contribute to his primary opponent,” Mitchell, the sophomore class representative, said in a statement.

Mitchell’s stance underscores a broader feeling in the GOP conference, where many Republicans would be relieved to see fresh faces with less baggage emerge victorious in some of these primary races. Otherwise, the GOP will continue to take the reputational hit that comes with these lawmakers serving in office — or worse, the party could lose those seats in the general election.

“You have a lot of people who have been concerned for many, many months now about finding some way of getting rid of some of these guys,” said Liz Mair, a GOP strategist. “There is a sense that we either clean House, or Democrats take those seats.”

Freshman Rep. Steve Watkins of Kansas, who has recently faced rumors that he’s poised to resign amid scandal, became the latest Republican to draw a primary challenge this week. State Treasurer Jake LaTurner decided to jump into the race (and abandon his Senate bid) after receiving public encouragement from Republican former Gov. Jeff Colyer, a rare primary intervention that fueled buzz in GOP circles.

A pile of Republican candidates is also vying to take on King, who has continued to kick up controversy all year, as well as indicted Rep. Chris Collins of New York, who was arrested on insider trading charges in August 2018.

And last week, former Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) announced he was exploring whether to challenge his old colleague Rep. Duncan Hunter, who will go to trial early next year for allegedly misusing $250,000 in campaign funds to finance a lavish lifestyle.

Outside groups are also itching to get involved, hoping to better position the party as Republicans try to claw their way back to power next year. The conservative Club for Growth is actively interviewing primary candidates for the Collins and Hunter races and keeping an eye on King’s district as well.

“I’ve told Republican leaders: We reserve the right to be in primaries, including in challenger races,” David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, said in an interview. “There is a lot of tension. They don’t want us to do that.”

But, he added, “We also recognize that we need to make sure the Republican majority is sustained.”

Now, I know and you know that this is just replacing overtly awful racists and criminals who will support Trump 99% of the time with much better behaved monsters who will support Trump 99% of the time, so the practical upshot is that Dems need to make the GOP own these jerkbags and make it very clear that a personnel change needs to be from red to blue.

The Once And Futureless Steve King

Sensing his demise in Iowa, Republican donors in Rep. Steve King's district are flocking to his primary challenger Randy Feenstra instead as the avowed white supremacist has finally become too much of an albatross, even in the era of Trump.

As he gears up for a difficult re-election cycle, Rep. Steve King’s campaign is strapped for cash. Individual donations to the Iowa Republican have continued to flow but support from corporate donors and King’s own colleagues have vanished entirely.

King has not received a single contribution this year from a political action committee associated with a sitting member of Congress. Corporate PACs and interest groups have also completely shunned him. Through the first six months of the year, King received just two contributions from third party political entities: $2,000 donations from PACs associated with two former members of Congress, Lamar Smith (R-TX) and the infamous Todd Akin (R-MO).

It is a remarkable though not entirely unpredictable abandonment of a sitting member of Congress. Though he was always controversial and further to the right than most of his colleagues, King has burned virtually all his bridges in the party this year with outlandish comments about white supremacy and abortion.

But while those comments have made King a pariah in the party—with House Republican leaders stripping him of his committee assignments—King has refused to leave office. Now, as he faces the toughest campaign since he was first elected in 2002, he is doing so with a potentially catastrophic lack of resources. The $18,365 that King’s campaign had in the bank at the end of June was the least cash on hand he’s ever reported after the first six months of a cycle.

King is dealing with that lack of resources as he faces very immediate threats to his incumbency. His 2018 Democratic opponent, former professional baseball player J.D. Scholten, lost by fewer than three points last year, and is making another run for the seat. This time around King also has a formidable Republican primary opponent, state senator Randy Feenstra, who has already scored endorsements from influential Iowans such as evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. At the end of July, Feenstra’s campaign committee reported having $337,314.30 cash on hand, compared to King’s $18,000.

Things weren’t always so financially dire for King. Throughout his time in the House, he has received more than $3 million from political groups associated with private companies, trade associations, members of Congress, and ideological advocacy groups. That support peaked during the 2012 cycle, when such groups donated nearly $700,000 to his re-election campaign.

King’s top industry donors throughout his career, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records, were the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Homebuilders, AT&T, Crystal Sugars, and the Rain and Hail Insurance Society. All of them last donated to King during the 2018 election cycle but have so far declined to do so in this cycle.

In fact, some are even funding his primary challenger. At least six industry PACs that have donated to King in the past, including those affiliated with shipping giant UPS and trade associations representing construction and agricultural firms, have chipped in to Feenstra’s campaign this year instead.

Contributions from Republican Party organs have also evaporated completely. King never relied too heavily on such donations—he generally received about $5,000 per cycle from GOP committees, with the most, about $32,000, coming during the 2010 cycle. But it appears he’ll be fighting for re-election next year without any financial assistance from his party, which is raising record sums this year.

Even Liz Cheney has abandoned King at this point. Expect a major effort to get behind Feenstra from the GOP for the rest of the year.

Of course the actual answer to Iowa's Steve King problem is Democratic candidate J.D. Scholten, who came within three points of toppling King in 2018.



Toss him a few bucks, eh?

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Republicans are screaming about Michigan Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and her "anti-Semitism" (which must be true because she's Muslim and wears a hijab and said that Israel has influence on US policy) and all, while the reality is that the Republicans are quite happy to be related to white supremacist fascist group Identity Evropa.

Identity Evropa is a fascist organization. Its members have been involved in violent street brawls, including 2017’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. While other white supremacist organizations imploded after the rally, Identity Evropa attempted to cast aside the alt-right’s tarnished image and rebrand as a “clean-cut” organization. The makeover was an attempt to appeal to the mainstream Republican Party, according to chat logs released Wednesday by the media collective Unicorn Riot.

But despite its new face, the group stayed true to its fascist heart, the leaked conversations reveal.

The chat group’s name was an ironic nod at the image Identity Evropa tries to present to outsiders: “Nice Respectable People Group.” The image landed the white supremacist group a softball interview with the Today Show last year. Privately, Identity Evropa members celebrated the interview as a recruitment driver, the leaked chat logs reveal.

“Can we send a bouquet of flowers and a ‘thank you from Identity Evropa’ card to the ‘TODAY Show’?” one group member wrote in a message first flagged by Media Matters researcher Madeline Peltz. “I feel like we owe them something after so many applications today.”

The racist group wasn’t just pandering to the media. Members were also encouraged to get involved with their local Republican parties, Splinter first reported.

“Identity Evropa leadership strongly encourages our members to get involved in local politics. We’ve been pushing this for a while, but haven’t seen much of it happening,” leader Patrick Casey wrote in an Oct. 2017 message. “Today I decided to get involved in my county’s Republican party. Everyone can do this without fear of getting doxxed. The GOP is essentially the White man’s party at this point (it gets Whiter every election cycle), so it makes far more sense for us to subvert it than to create our own party.”

Months later, Identity Evropa member and Charlottesville marcher James Allsup quietly won an uncontested seat in his local Republican party, The Daily Beast first reported. After months of hedging by local Republican leaders who likened Allsup to a lynching victim, the local party ejected him in January.

But other Identity Evropa members have stayed close to the Republican Party. One member who described himself in October as having “an interview for a political job coming up. Anyone know any good inside sources for political news? I can't say my main news source is [fascist podcast] Fash the Nation.” (Elsewhere in the chat, he posted racist and anti-Semitic attacks.)

The member used the screen name “Logan” and shared links to his now-defunct website, which he registered under the name, Logan Piercy. He described “door knocking” on behalf of Republican candidates in Montana during the 2018 congressional primaries. Piercy did not return The Daily Beast’s Thursday request for comment at the email address used to register his website.

Racists who didn’t campaign on the ground instead pushed for their favorite Republicans from afar. In September, when Rep. Steve King was under fire for being a white supremacist, Casey ordered the group to call then-House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy to voice support for King, HuffPost first reported.

“Got through on the 202 number,” one member wrote. “Thanked lady for taking my call, identified myself as a member of a young conservationist Republican group that supports Congressman Steve King.”

Others bragged of donating money to King, and dreamed about getting him to interact with their Twitter account, as he has with other white supremacists.

Younger members described themselves as being members of College Republicans clubs.

“I’m an officer in my college republicans. I’m sure many other IE members are. It’s easy to infiltrate low level GOP stuff if you just show up,” one Identity Evropa member said in September, adding that he hoped to convert two members of his club. He also described modeling the club after Identity Evropa.

“[That feeling when] I’m making rules for my college republicans based on the IE guidelines and it makes me look like the responsible moderate,” he wrote.

“Join college republicans if you haven’t already,” another urged his fellow white supremacists.

The party clucking their tongue at the "Democrats' increasing anti-Semitism" really needs to worry about the hate group infestation that it is currently embracing on a daily basis.

Last Call For Both Sides Against The Lady

Everyone is coming down hard on Rep. Ilhan Omar, who pretty much gets accused of being anti-Semitic if she gets up in the morning.  Apparently House Democrats, or the powers that be around them, are sick of her and Nancy Pelosi is giving her a stern warning.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democrats will take floor action Wednesday in response to controversial remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar about Israel, the second such rebuke of the freshman Democrat from party leaders in recent weeks.

Pelosi and other senior Democrats have drafted a resolution to address the controversy, which ballooned over the weekend following a public clash between Omar and senior Jewish lawmakers.

The resolution, which began circulating to members Monday night, comes after a backlash from top Democrats who accused Omar of anti-Semitism for referring to pro-Israel advocates’ “allegiance to a foreign country.”
The draft measure is four pages that largely details the history and recent rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. but does not specifically name Omar, which had been an internal dispute among Democrats.

Instead, it condemns the "myth of dual loyalty," using the same language as top Democrats, like House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, who have condemned Omar in recent days.

If the House moves ahead with the vote on Wednesday as planned, it would be an unprecedented public rebuke of Omar, who was sworn into office just over 60 days ago. Omar's office declined to comment about the Democratic resolution on Monday.

Yet these efforts by Pelosi and other Democratic leaders won't be enough for Republicans, who want a more serious punishment for Omar.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other senior Republicans are considering offering a censure motion against Omar, according to GOP sources. Republicans may also formally demand that Democrats strip Omar of her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, a move that Pelosi and other senior Democrats won't take at this point.

It's the "at this point" that gives the game away.   House Republicans saw Steve King stripped of his committee assignments six weeks ago for his decades-long white supremacist views, since Omar is a Muslim woman Democrat who wears a hijab, she gets about 1% of that time before she becomes the trade-off that Democrats have to accept for Steve King, and for doing far less.

The Washington Post of course immediately yells BOTH SIDES DO IT not just once from Henry Olsen...

Omar is right that it is entirely legitimate to criticize U.S. policy towards Israel, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is her repeated suggestion that support for the current policy toward Israel is the product of Jewish money buying support and/or Jews who are more loyal to Israel’s interests than they are to those of the United States. Those claims are false and bigoted.

Republicans learned the hard way with King that where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire. His repeatedly bigoted statements about immigrants were condemned but otherwise ignored by House Republican leadership. Clearly, they hoped that they were aberrations, or that the congressman would come to his senses and keep whatever bigotry he harbored in his heart to himself.

But that approach proved too lenient. Earlier this year, King finally made indisputably clear what many had long suspected during an interview with the New York Times, in which he said: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” He had finally crossed the line, and Republicans — who could not expel him from their caucus under party rules — removed him from all committee assignments. (King has argued that the quote was mischaracterized.)

Democrats need to do the same thing with Omar. They might hope that she will straighten up, but as the GOP learned with King, bigotry can be a deep-rooted plant.

...but twice, with Dana "Dick Whisperer" Milbank.

What does Rep. Ilhan Omar have in common with President Trump? Sadly, more than you would think.

The Democratic freshman from Minnesota is perhaps the most prominent victim of the anti-Muslim hatred that Trump spews. The president appeared to be referring to Omar, a Somali American, when he told a conservative audience Saturday that certain members of Congress “hate our country.” She has also been the target of regular death threats and vile displays such as a poster at a GOP-sponsored event in the West Virginia Capitol on Friday linking her to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Yet Omar herself is doing something akin to what her disgusting opponents are doing to her: She has suggested that Americans who support Israel — by implication, Jews — are disloyal to the United States. At an event in Washington last week, Omar said, in the context of the pro-Israel lobby, that “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

The NY Times on the other hand asks the correct question, which is the exact point which has been lost in the screaming racist Islamophobia here: AIPAC does have a lot of influence in Congress in a way that almost no other lobbying organization has.

But the swirling debate not only around Ms. Omar but also around broader currents buffeting the Middle East has forced an uncomfortable re-examination of the questions that she has raised: Has Aipac — founded more than 50 years ago to “strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship” — become too powerful? And with that power, has Aipac warped the policy debate over Israel so drastically that dissenting voices are not even allowed to be heard?

Those questions have grown louder with the controversy around Ms. Omar and will grow louder still in the run-up to this month’s annual Aipac policy conference — a three-day Washington confab that is expected to draw more than 18,000 people, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and leaders of both parties in Congress. To critics, Ms. Omar had a point, even if it was expressed with unfortunate glibness. Aipac’s money does have an outsize influence.

And let's not forget that Israeli PM Netanyahu has been indicted on criminal charges and is currently facing his own massive scandal involving bribery and corruption back home.

Omar is being made an example of, and it pisses me off that the Democratic leadership is playing along.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King's overt white supremacy is becoming too much for the rest of the Republican party to pretend to not be the party of, so plenty of kabuki theater happened on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell became the highest-ranking Republican to speak out against Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) following his racially charged comments, saying that there is ‘no place in the Republican Party, the Congress or the country for an ideology of racial supremacy of any kind.”

McConnell made his statement Monday as three House Democrats, including the No. 3 Democratic leader, announced plans to try to sanction King for his statements.

“I have no tolerance for such positions and those who espouse these views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms,” McConnell said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “Rep. King’s statements are unwelcome and unworthy of his elected position. If he doesn’t understand why ‘white supremacy’ is offensive, he should find another line of work.”

Three House Democrats said they would introduce measures disapproving of King, an escalation in the response to King’s frequent controversies.

Reps. Bobby L. Rush (Ill.) and Tim Ryan (Ohio) said the House should censure King and separately filed resolutions to do so. Censure is a rarely invoked punishment for conduct bringing dishonor on the House, the most serious punishment that can be levied on one of its members short of expulsion.

And House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he would introduce a measure less serious than censure but one that would strongly reproach King.

Clyburn said he was moved to act in part by Tuesday’s 90th anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I call this a tale of two Kings,” he said, adding, “We’ve got to break our silence on these kinds of things.”

It's hysterical to see King get treated the way Donald Trump never would be, when Trump has on repeated occasions said and done far worse, but that's how this game is played.  Donald Trump can be as racist as he wants to because he's Donald Trump.  Everyone else in the GOP is supposed to be covering for him, and if Steve King lets the cat out of the bag that the whole party is racist like this, the plan falls apart.

Besides, I'm pretty sure nobody in the GOP actually likes Steve King anyway, he's kind of an asshole.

House Republican leaders removed Representative Steve King of Iowa from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees on Monday night as the party officials scrambled to appear tough on racism and contain damage from comments Mr. King made to The New York Times questioning why white supremacy is considered offensive.

The punishment came on a day when Mr. King’s own party leadership moved against him, with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, suggesting Mr. King find “another line of work” and Senator Mitt Romney saying he should quit. In an attempt to be proactive, the House Republicans stripped him of his committee seats in the face of multiple Democratic resolutions to censure Mr. King that are being introduced this week.

Those measures will force Republicans to take a stand on whether to go along with the House Democratic majority’s attempt to publicly reprimand one of their own.

Speaking to reporters on Monday night after the congressional Republicans acted, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the party leader in the House, said he was not ruling out supporting a censure or reprimand resolution against Mr. King. He said the Republicans are not removing Mr. King from the G.O.P. House conference itself so he can still attend its party meetings.

“I think voters have that decision to make. But I think we spoke loud and clear that we will not tolerate this in the Republican Party,” said Mr. McCarthy, who conferred privately with Mr. King for an hour on Monday afternoon.

Wait until they find out Donald Trump is a racist, man.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom

Just in case you've been under a rock for the last half-century or so, Republicans are screaming racists who go out of their way to selectively enforce laws to punish black and brown people.  GOP Rep. Steve King still doesn't understand what's so bad about white supremacy, and said as much this week.

Rep. Steve King addressed the controversy surrounding his statements about white nationalism and white supremacy in a New York Times article on the U.S. House floor Friday.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, yielded his time to the Iowa Republican as the House debated the southern border wall funding impasse. King used the time to say he "made a freshman mistake" talking with a New York Times reporter without recording the interview.

"But one phrase in that long article has created an unnecessary controversy," King said. "That was my mistake."

The quote that King said sparked "heartburn" appeared in the article published Thursday about King's role in the U.S.-Mexico border wall discussion and President Donald Trump's immigration policy.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King told the Times reporter. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

On the House floor, King said the quote was taken out of context. King argued he was saying terms like white supremacist, white nationalist and Nazi were "almost always unjustly labeling otherwise innocent people."

"It was about how those words got plugged into our dialogue, not when the words became offensive, which is what the technical interpretation of it is," King said. "It's how did that offensive language get injected into our political dialogue."

I mean we've heard this before, it's standard white supremacist garbage to say things like this and then scream about context, political correctness and false accusations.  Giving King the benefit of the doubt when his own state's top newspaper has documented multiple racist statements he's made in office is pointless.

So the GOP's lone black lawmaker in Congress, Sen. Tim Scott, is concerned.

When people with opinions similar to King’s open their mouths, they damage not only the Republican Party and the conservative brand but also our nation as a whole. They want to be treated with fairness for some perceived slights but refuse to return the favor to those on the other side.

Some in our party wonder why Republicans are constantly accused of racism — it is because of our silence when things like this are said. Immigration is the perfect example, in which somehow our affection for the rule of law has become conflated with a perceived racism against brown and black people.

I do support border security not because I want to keep certain ethnicities out of our nation, but because I support enforcing our laws. I do not care if you come from Canada, France or Honduras, if you break our laws, there should be consequences. But it has become almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation along those lines. That’s in part why I laid out my agenda on civility, fairness and opportunity on Thursday on the floor of the Senate.

King’s comments are not conservative views but separate views that should be ridiculed at every turn possible. Conservative principles mean equal opportunity for all to succeed, regardless of what you look like or where you are from. It is maddening to see so many folks who believe this and have only good intentions in their hearts tarnished by these radical perspectives.

That is why silence is no longer acceptable. It is tempting to write King — or other extremists on race issues, such as black-nationalist Louis Farrakhan — as lonely voices in the wilderness, but they are far more dangerous than that. They continue to rip at the fabric of our nation, a country built on hope, strength and diversity. It is the opposite of civility and fairness and will lead only to more pain and suffering.

We have made significant progress in our nation, and while there is still work to do, we cannot let these intolerant and hateful views hold us back. This is a uniquely fractured time in our nation’s history, not our worst but far from our best, and it is only together that we will rebuild the trust we seem to have lost in each other.

Which would be funny if Tim Scott hadn't voted with Donald Trump 96% of the time over the last two years.

How Steve King is able to remain in Congress is because people like Tim Scott, when given the chance to act against racism and oppose the white supremacy that has taken over the party, still choose to side with the white supremacists.

Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King doesn't apologize for his white nationalist views because he's simply reflecting the will of his white nationalist constituents.

Across the 4th District — a highly conservative swath of Iowa nearly 200 miles wide, mile upon mile of fertile farmland dotted with towns the length of a two-block Main Street — King has widespread support. 

“Steve’s Steve. He’s a local guy. He graduated from high school here. He comes in for breakfast on Sundays,” says Crawford County Supervisor Eric Skoog, who with his wife, Terri, owns what they believe to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Iowa. 

At the counter of Cronk’s, which has been open since 1929, Skoog says he disagrees with King on immigration and hasn’t been afraid to share his conflicting views. Skoog has worked hard to help local schools adjust to the influx of immigrant children in Denison, one place in the heavily white district where a major meatpacking plant has drawn a sizable Hispanic community. 

Still, Skoog said, “I don’t see him as racist. I don’t know. He’s just Steve.” Come November, he said, he’ll probably vote for him. 

Some in the district welcome King’s blunt talk. 

“We’re getting pretty happy in this country about kicking the white guy. Only one group of people haven’t achieved minority status, and it’s white men,” says Steve Sorensen, a former truck driver, watching the World Series in a Hampton bar. “You can fire a white man every time you want. He’s got no recourse. Try that with anybody else.” 

Mindy Rainer also believes that others get government benefits more easily than she does, as a white woman. “There are people out there that are desperate as hell, and I’m one of them,” she says, sliding up to the bar at the restaurant in the town of Cherokee where she works. 

Rainer’s husband was injured on a job site 25 years ago, she said, and denied disability benefits because of bureaucratic hurdles. She has supported them both, but now her kidneys are failing and she fears that she won’t be able to work for the eight years until her husband can collect Social Security. 

Rainer recalled lining up to try to get help with her utility bills when she lived in South Carolina and becoming suspicious of the others in line, almost all of them African American. 

“What upset me more than anything was all them black babies were dressed up in the best clothes,” she said. “When their kids are wearing $150 tennis shoes, what do you think?” 

She sides with King when he talks about immigration. “Why should we feed others when we can’t feed ourselves?” she asked.

Steve King is just representing the views of rural Iowans who want a political party that puts white people first, particularly white men, because that's how it should be in America.  The difference is thanks to Donald Trump, it's perfectly okay to say that you want to vote for the guy running on the platform of "white advocacy", and not a single one of them thinks it's racist because there's a generation of white folk in America who believe they have been discriminated against since birth.

This is America, the party of whites versus the party of those people and Steve King is happily running as a proud member of the former.

Last Call For King Of Bores

The mask slips, and Republicans no longer need to resort to dog whistle symbolism to couch their racism and misogyny in, they get to announce it straight up as policy planks in the Trump era.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is calling for using federal funding for Planned Parenthood and food stamps to help pay for President Trump’s border wall with Mexico, The Washington Examiner reported Wednesday. 

On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee introduced a spending bill that would allocate $1.6 billion towards building the wall separating the U.S. from Mexico. The funding is part of the total $13.8 billion for customs and border protection. 

King said he supports the spending measure, but he would prefer an additional $5 billion for the wall — and suggested taking the extra funding from Planned Parenthood and federal welfare programs.

“I would find half of a billion dollars of that right out of Planned Parenthood's budget," he told the Examiner. "And the rest of it could come out of food stamps and the entitlements that are being spread out for people that haven't worked in three generations." 

"We've got to put America back to work, this administration will do it," King said.

Screw women, screw Mexicans and screw poor people.  We'll take their money and build a goddamn wall with it.  Vote GOP in 2018!

And tens of millions of us will be perfectly okay with that and cast their vote for King and Republicans just like him across the country.  If you thought for a second that the Trump regime's current meltdown would have one iota of a moderating (or humanizing) effect on Republicans in Congress, you're fatally incorrect.

Meanwhile the larger issue besides massive GOP hatred of more than half of America is the fact that there's a very good chance funding Trump's wall may end up being the hill that Republicans choose to die on when it comes to another government shutdown.

House Republicans are ready to provide a down payment on President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico, reigniting a fight that could lead to a government shutdown this fall. 

In a nod to Trump’s signature campaign promise, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday unveiled a bill to fund Homeland Security that matches the administration’s request for $1.6 billion for the next fiscal year.

But the money might never get out the door. Senate Democrats are sure to object to any government funding bill with money for the wall, and they successfully pressured Republicans to keep out wall money from a funding bill earlier this year. With many Republicans skittish about being blamed for a shutdown, GOP insiders expect a replay.
Still, Trump and his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, have said they won’t cave so readily this time — even if it means shutting down the government. And already conservatives in the House are urging the administration to embrace the hardball strategy. 

“I am willing to do whatever it takes in the Senate to ensure President Trump’s promise to the American people is kept,” said Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a Freedom Caucus member who’s running for Senate — in part on a platform to build the wall. “I’ll aggressively oppose every single spending bill that doesn’t fund the border wall and expose every Republican establishment senator who sides with the Democrats against our president.” 

The thirst for a showdown to check off a campaign promise will only be even greater if Republicans fail to pass an Obamacare repeal bill. Trump was furious earlier this year when Beltway coverage of a spending deal portrayed him as a loser in the wall standoff with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

If Republicans like Steve King and Mo Brooks are ready to shut down the government over funding Trump's wall with cuts to SNAP and women's health care, the only thing that's going to get built in 2018 is a Democratic majority.

The King Of Wishful Stinking

As I said last week about virulently racist Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King, the problem isn't the 7-term Congressman, the problem is the people who keep re-electing him despite his obvious racism.  Des Moines journalist and WHO-TV political director Dave Price gives us this analysis of the people of King's district, IA-4, and why King will keep being sent to DC time and time again.

But there is more to King’s tells-it-like-it-is appeal. Northwestern Iowa is changing. Financially, the farm community has struggled over the past few years with commodity prices for corn and beans often falling below the cost of production. That’s helping to shrink the rural population, especially among younger people, who are increasingly looking to bigger cities like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids for better job opportunities. According to the U.S. Census, King’s home county of Crawford now has a population of about 17,000 people—about 4,000 fewer than it had in 1900. 

The area had been nearly all white for generations, but that, too, has been slowly changing as more Hispanic immigrants have arrived. In 2000, the county was about 93 percent white. That’s now dropped to 82 percent, with Hispanics accounting for nearly all of the change. Eager to make a living for themselves, many newcomers have been willing to take lower-paying jobs in agriculture, manufacturing and meat-packing. And not everyone is comfortable with the changing look of schools, grocery stores and churches in town. 

“There are some ‘Steve Kings’ out there,” says immigration attorney Jason Finch, who practices in Denison and nearby Storm Lake, two communities with rising immigrant populations. And he doesn’t mean it as a compliment. “I had a county attorney tell me it was his life’s mission to deport as many immigrants as he could.” 

Still, Finch reckons that anti-immigrant sentiment is held by a shrinking majority in the region, and where it exists, he says, it tends to be rooted more in ignorance than racism. “The younger generation handles it a lot better than the older generation does,” Finch says. 

Politically, much of King’s district is deeply conservative, with registered Republicans (nearly 200,000 of them) easily outnumbering registered Democrats (fewer than 125,000). That makes it hard for challengers to take on King, no matter how many controversial assertions he makes. 

In 2012, King was tested by a genuinely tough reelection fight. His opponent was Christie Vilsack, the spouse of a popular former Democratic governor, Tom Vilsack, who would later become U.S. secretary of agriculture. King’s district had been redrawn, and was less Republican as a result. But King ended up getting a boost from Branstad, who had grown concerned with the dynamics of the race and personally sent staff to help the campaign. King won by 8 points. 

The next year, as Congress debated comprehensive immigration reform, King took a stand as one of the most conservative—and controversial—voices speaking out against illegal immigration. “For every one who’s a valedictorian,” he told Newsmax, referring to young undocumented immigrants crossing the border, “there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds. And they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’ve been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Iowa Republicans cringed at the words, but no prominent leader strongly denounced King at the time. 

His margin of victory on election night in 2014? It was 23 points—far higher than his margin against Vilsack two years before, but just about par for the course for King. In fact, King has long crushed his competition. With the exception of 2012, he has won by at least 21 percentage points in each of his reelection bids; in 2010, the margin was 34 points.

In other words, King is in one of the safest districts in the country for the GOP, and even attempts to primary him go down in flames.

Nick Ryan understands why. Last year, Ryan, one of the state’s most well-known Republican operatives and donors, helped to orchestrate the first primary challenge King has faced since winning his seat in 2002. Ryan’s chosen candidate, State Senator Rick Bertrand, lost by 30 percentage points.

Steve King represents the people who keep voting for him.  They are no different from him, not enough to motivate them to vote for someone else.  Steve King's racism isn't the core problem.  The fact that his racism is perfectly acceptable to tens of thousands of Iowa voters every two years is. Until that changes, he'll keep his job.

Maybe Trump's proposed 30% cuts to the USDA will do it.  Who knows.  But we need to stop making excuses for the people who keep voting in racists and expecting them to stop being that way.

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.

Last Call For Heartbeat (Bill) Of America, Con't

Folks, you knew this was coming, and I've been warning you about it for months. Republicans are making their move early to eliminate legal abortion in America, and of course the man behind it is Steve King.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Thursday introduced the first federal “heartbeat bill” modeled on a failed Ohio attempt to end legal abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—before many people know they’re pregnant.

“Heartbeat bills” amount to total abortion bans. They have been declared unconstitutional in federal court.

King’s office confirmed that HR 490 marked the first introduction of a so-called heartbeat bill in the U.S. Congress. Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) introduced a forced ultrasound bill in 2011, but her measure did not ban abortion—King’s stated goal.

A King press release called Roe v. Wade unconstitutional, adding that under HR 490, “if a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.”

His spokesperson provided Rewire with legislative text specifying that an abortion provider “who knowingly performs an abortion and thereby kills a human fetus” without determining a heartbeat, informing the patient of a heartbeat, or proceeding regardless of a heartbeat would face fines and up to five years in prison. The bill includes limited exceptions for the physical health of the pregnant person but not for “psychological or emotional conditions.”

King worked on the bill with anti-choice activist Janet Porter, the Faith2Action leader deemed too extreme for Christian talk radio, the congressman’s spokesperson said. Porter was behind Ohio Republicans’ recent failed attempt to push through a total abortion ban. Anti-choice Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed the measure the same day he signed a 20-week ban into law, reasoning that the 20-week ban would be more constitutionally prudent. It’s not.

Porter persuaded King to act while both attended the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, the notorious Equal Rights Amendment opponent, as People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch first reported in October.

“I gave him a packet and he has agreed to introduce a federal Heartbeat Bill, which would protect every baby whose heartbeat can be detected,” Porter said on a conference call at the time. “That will actually end abortion in nearly every case. Ninety to 95 percent of the abortions will be ended with that bill.”

It's bad enough that this will probably pass the House (and hopefully dies screaming in the Senate) but King outright calling Roe unconstitutional is nonsense.  It's pretty clear what King expects, that this will be the vehicle to destroy Roe and end legal, safe abortion in America and move it to back alleys and illegal clinics.

How far it will go, we'll see.  But expect many more attempts to end Roe over the next two years, minimum.

The Whitewashing Of History

It's one thing to constantly put up the Republican party's dog whistle Southern Strategy racism, but it's quite another to have a Republican Congressman go on television and pitch actual white supremacy arguments during the party convention. And of course, it's Iowa Republican Steve King making an ass of himself and his state again.

Appearing on MSNBC Monday evening, King was part of a panel of four people discussing the Republican National Convention. Esquire’s Charles Pierce, one of King’s co-panelists, commented on the dominance of “loud, unhappy, dissatisfied white people” at the RNC. King objected not so much to Pierce’s factual premise as to the notion that the monochromatic nature of the GOP is a bug.

“This whole ‘white people business’ though does get a little tired,” King declared. “I’d ask you to go back through history,” he added, “and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people your talking about. Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”

Holy hell.  He actually said this.

When host Chris Hayes asked King to clarify whether the congressman was asserting that no race contributed more to society than white people, King made a slight rhetorical shift, claiming instead that “western civilization” that is “rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America, and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world” is the greatest contributor to civilization.

And I mean this, guys, he actually said this.




So....yeah.  White people made the "greatest contribution" to the planet.  I'm sure that's news to Africa, The Americas and Asia, with civilizations around millennia before Europe was settled.  What the hell did the Egyptians, Babylonians, Mayans, Songhai, Aztecs, and Chinese ever do for the world, anyway?  Probably nothing as good as Hot Pockets and TV, man.

Asshole.

And yet this guy is a sitting congressman, spouting white nationalist garbage on TV.  This is your modern GOP, guys.  Own up to the racism, or do something to stop it.

King Of Money

Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King decided he wanted to score some cheap points by introducing legislation stopping the Treasury from putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, but not even his fellow House Republicans want to touch that one in an election year.

U.S. Rep. Steve King has introduced anamendment in Congress that would prevent Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist and supporter of women's suffrage, from replacing President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

However, the House Rules Committee agreed Tuesday night to deny floor consideration of proposal, which would have prevented the Treasury Department from spending money to redesign paper currency or coins.

The Iowan Republican's amendment, which was first reported by the Huffington Post, would scrap the federal government's plans to replace Jackson on the $20 bill with a picture of Tubman, a black woman who was born in to slavery in 1822 and later escaped. She subsequently made repeated missions on the Underground Railroad to rescue black people from slavery. During the Civil War, she served as a Union Army scout and spy.

"It's not about Harriet Tubman, it's about keeping the picture on the $20," King said Tuesday night, according to Politico, pulling a $20 bill from his pocket and pointing at President Andrew Jackson. "Y'know? Why would you want to change that? I am a conservative, I like to keep what we have."

Politico quoted King as saying it is "racist" and "sexist" to say a woman or person of color should be added to currency.

"Here's what's really happening, this is liberal activism on the part of the president, that's trying to identify people by categories and he's divided us on the lines of groups. … This is a divisive proposal on the part of the president and mine's unifying. It says just don't change anything."

Well, refusing to change anything is the definition of political conservatism alright, but I'm not sure what's more directly insulting, that King feels a famous civil rights leader who risked her life to help end slavery shouldn't be on the $20, or that the Treasury department honoring her is "divisive" in some way.

When your proposal is so transparently racist, sexist, and stupid that it can't even get out of your own party's House Rules Committee, you might want to re-examine your political stunt checklist, Steve.

Last Call For Bravely Rand Away

Sen. Rand Paul had a bit of a problem yesterday when a pair of immigration activists found him eating lunch in Iowa along with GOP Rep Steve King Of The Melonheads.  Steve King stuck around to argue (badly) with Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas, but about five seconds after meeting the pair, Rand Paul apparently got up and fled in abject terror.

Today, Rand Paul made his excuses as to why he fled the scene at approximately MACH 9.

"About two minutes before that, the video doesn't show that another reporter came up and said 'will you do an interview,'" Paul explained on Fox News' "On The Record." "And I said, 'I need to take a couple more bites and we'll do an interview.' And then I was told we had to leave and I had to do the interview. So actually, I stand about ten feet from those people, who were doing sort of a kamikaze interview, and I stood ten feet from them and did another interview." 

The aide who whisked Paul away from the immigration activists, Sergio Gor, previously told the National Journal that Paul "had a media avail after the event and that's where we had to be." 

The Kentucky Republican said he doesn't shy away from debate on immigration. 

"I've always been open to discussing immigration. I'm very open to discussing that I think there should be some kind of immigration reform," Paul told host Greta Van Susteren. "But I don't think you can do it without first securing the border, and that's the problem with the President doing this unlawfully."

Uh-huh.  "I wasn't running away from this interview.  I was running towards another interview, because I'm really important and I'm here in Iowa campaigning for 2016 and besides, I trust Steve King's judgment on immigration."

The old political adage "If you're explaining, you're losing" is apropos here.  Trust me, Rand Paul is losing.

So Three Schmucks Head To Egypt...

...and I wish I had a really great joke to go along with that opening, but sadly that's the headline to this story of GOP dipsticks Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Steve King actually going to Egypt.  To have a press conference.  Where they announced their plans to undermine US foreign policy for all the entire world to see last weekend.

Tea party-backed Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) on Saturday held a press conference in Egypt to thank the country’s military for overthrowing the elected government, and at one point even seemed to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood had been behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

“Together, we’ve gone through suffering. Together, the United States and Egypt, have dealt with the same enemy,” Bachmann explained. “It’s a common enemy, and it’s an enemy called terrorism.”

“We want to make sure that you have the Apache helicopters, the F-16s, the equipment that you have so bravely used to capture terrorists and to take care of this menace that’s on your border,” she continued. “Many of you have asked, do we understand who the enemy is? We can speak for ourselves. We do.”

“We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed here for the people in Egypt. We have seen the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood has posed around the world. We stand against this great evil. We are not for them. We remember who caused 9/11 in America. We remember who it was that killed 3,000 brave Americans. We have not forgotten.”

So yes, if you're keeping score, these three clowns 1) went to a foreign capital in order to criticize the President, 2) promised the Egyptian military an increase in military aid after staging a coup, the exact opposite of stated US policy,  and 3) blamed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood for 9/11.

This is actually breathtakingly awful, it should be illegal, and it should get all three of these jackasses tossed from the House.  But hey, they're Republicans attacking the President, so nobody will care.

Steve King Of The Melonheads

Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King refuses to let go of his hatred towards undocumented Latinos, and won't until he's forced to by voters.

In what became a heated argument, Rep. Steve King on Sunday once again defended his controversial remarks about drug smugglers among immigrants who could be legalized under the DREAM Act, setting off a tense exchange with Republican strategist Ana Navarro.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," the Iowa Republican was asked to a respond to a his remarks that “for everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert."

King said his statements were accurate and have been misconstrued.

"My numbers have not been debunked. I said valedictorians compared to people who would be legalized under the act that are drug smugglers coming across the border. My characterization was exclusively to drug smugglers," King said.

Host David Gregory said the remark had been debunked in that it was impossible to know how many valedictorians or drug smugglers would be involved in the DREAM Act.

“Then, what's their number? How many valedictorians do they suggest? And I’ll tell you, I've seen the drug smugglers," King said. "For this to be characterized by Dick Durbin as valedictorians, I'm telling the American people that I recognize that. … But this proposes to legalize a lot of people that will include the people who are drug smugglers up to the age of 35.”

It was at this point on MTP that GOP strategist Ana Navarro tore King a new one.

“I think Congressman King should go get some therapy for his melon fixation. I think there might be medication for that. I think he's a mediocre congressman with no legislative record and the only time he makes national press is when he comes out and says something offensive about the undocumented or Hispanics,” Navarro said, saying he’s been “helpful” to the debate by getting other Republicans to denounce his remarks.

Gregory brought King back to allow him to respond.

“First of all, I spoke only of drug smugglers. And if Ana understands the language, she should know that. I didn't insult her or other Republicans,” King said.

“I’m not undocumented, congressman, I vote,” Navarro interjected.

This is a Republican politico saying this to King on a Sunday show, no less.  Not that he didn't deserve every ounce of Navarro's scorn, of course.  But the larger message is that any sort of Latino outreach by Republicans like Navarro is 100% worthless as long as the GOP remains the party of Steve King and the dozens of assholes like him.

Navarro knows this full well, and she's rightfully furious.  Steve King makes her job impossible.

I have no sympathy for Navarro, however.  You chose to align yourself with racists like King, now you're learning the hard way why King is irredeemable.  Good luck with your Sisyphean efforts, and don't let the boulder roll you down on the way to 2016.