Warren Blumenfeld believes US Representative Steve King needs to vacate his office, “before he commits further and possibly irreversible damage to his constituents, his home state, his Party, his country, and, ultimately, to himself.”
“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. Those people would be legalized with the same act.” U.S. Representative from Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District, Steve King, interviewed by Newsmax July 23, 2013 regarding his opposition to allowing undocumented youth a pathway toward U.S. citizenship.
If U.S. Representative Steve King simply opened his mouth and inserted his foot, at least he wouldn’t be able to utter a word. Instead, King’s modus operandi is to stereotype, scapegoat, and offend entire groups of people while simultaneously embarrassing his constituents, the state of Iowa, the national Republican Party, and the United States in its dealings with nations around the world.
Before I moved from Iowa this past May, though Steve King was elected in my congressional district, he certainly did not represent me nor did he serve anyone else, including the good people who for some unfathomable reason voted for him.
King not only recently equated undocumented youth with drug-hauling pack mules, but he has repeatedly represented people south of the U.S. border as other forms of animal life. For example, referring to the border fence:
We could also electrify this wire (on the border) with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would simply be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time.
King also associated immigration laws with choosing the best dog from the litter:
You put out a beacon like the Statue of Liberty, and who comes here? The most vigorous from every country that has donated legal immigrants to America. The cream of the crop. We’ve always had bird dogs around our place. In our family there’s a black lab and white lab, a yellow lab, and my brother has a chocolate lab. Well, you go in and you look at a litter of pups, and you watch them. You watch how they play — they run around a little bit — and what do you want? You want a good bird dog, and you want one that’s gonna be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest, the one that’s in games the most — not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner … [S]o, you get the pick of the litter, you got yourself a pretty good bird dog …
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King showed his hand on how he considered people different from himself when speaking to supporters on August 21, 2012 at a Le Mars, Iowa, Town Hall meeting when he argued that the promotion of the concept of multiculturalism will ultimately bring about the demise of the United States as we know it. King conjured up a supposed deep-seated and sinister plot to ensnare young and impressionable first-year college students into campus multicultural groups for the purpose of turning them into victims, which will convince them to work toward the eventual overthrow of the social and political power structure.
King talked about preparing for a debate some time ago at the Iowa State University campus on the concept of multiculturalism. He checked out the university’s website: “I typed in ‘multicultural,’” he stated, “and it came back to me at the time, 59 different multicultural groups listed to do to operate on campus at Iowa State … And most of them were victims’ groups, victimology, people who feel sorry for themselves.”
He warned that these groups are “out there recruiting our young people to be part of the group who are feeling sorry for themselves….But just think of 59 card tables set up across the parking lot on the way to the dorm … And the first group says, ‘Well, you’re a victim that fits us. We want to help you. Why don’t you join us?’….And then you’re brought into a group that has a grievance against society rather than understand there’s a tremendous blessing in this society.”
Though King attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970, taking courses toward a career as a wildlife officer, he never completed his degree. His political career officially began when he won election to the Iowa Senate sitting from 1996-2002. While there, he was instrumental in passing the law making English as the “official” language of Iowa. He then ran for and was elected to the U.S. House of Representative in 2002 sitting on the Agricultural and Judiciary Committees, Constitution Subcommittee and Immigration Subcommittee. He also chairs the powerful House of Representatives Conservative Opportunity Society caucus. While in public office, he has consistently taken stands championed by the political Right opposing affirmative action for women and minoritized people, marriage equality for same-sex couples, women’s reproductive rights, and gun control, among others.
Over the past few years, the so-called “Birther Movement,” of which Rep. King is a prominent member, has tirelessly worked to define President Barack Obama as “other” by attempting to prevent our President the right of self-definition – an apparent contradiction within a political party that emphasizes rugged individualism, freedom, and liberty over one’s life. In August 2012, King made the absurdist accusation during a tele-townhall meeting that though his staff had found Barack Obama’s birth announcement in two separate Hawaiian newspapers, “That doesn’t mean there aren’t some other explanations on how they might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya.”
King also asserted while Obama was running for the presidential nomination in 2008:
When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States … [w]hat does it look like to the world of Islam? I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.
While the late night comedians are having a field day with the Anthony Weiner scandal and the political pundits’ calls for him to leave the New York City mayoral campaign are growing increasingly louder citing the embarrassment he is causing the residents of that great city due to his innumerable sexual transgressions and extreme lack of judgment, I would add another politician, Steve King, a sitting Congressperson, to vacate his office before he commits further and possibly irreversible damage to his constituents, his home state, his Party, his country, and, ultimately, to himself.