So, yeah. Iowa Republican Representative Steve King. Wow.
In an radio interview with KICD AM in Spencer, IA, he made several comments that would have gotten Howard Stern banned from all-media for life - and then defended the comments in an Associated Press interview. But Steve King isn't a shock-jock radio talking head - he's an elected representative serving in the United States Congress.
I know there are good people in Iowa (my Grandfather was a Lutheran pastor there for many years) and I can't imagine they're proud of this kind of uneducated, simple-minded bigotry. I would be outraged if some obviously mentally disturbed idiot made my state look like something out of "Deliverance".
I have several words to describe Rep. Kind after reading his comments. None of them would ever be mentioned in polite company. Why don't I let Mr. King speak for himself - the following transcript is available on his official house.gov site:
Comments delivered by Congressman Steve King during a radio interview in Spencer, Iowa on March 7, 2008:
“I’m going to say something here that I haven’t said in the public arena, that I think it’s time to start thinking about."
"That is that, I don’t want to disparage anyone because of their race or their ethnicity or their name or whatever the religion of their father might have been."
"I’ll just say this, when you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected president of the United States, and I mean. What does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?"
"I will tell you that if he is elected president, the radical Islamists, the al-Qa'ida and the radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11th. Because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."
"They will say the United States has capitulated because we will be pulling our troops out of any conflict that has to do with al-Qa’ida anywhere."
"And additionally, it does matter. His middle name does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that, the rest of the world,---it has a special meaning to them."
"They’ll be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They’ll be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says, “Pull out of the middle east. Pull out of this conflict.”"
"So there are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he’s taken. If he were strong on national defense and said, ‘I’m going to go over there and we’re going to fight and we’re going to win. We’re going to come home with a victory,’ that’s different."
"But that’s not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he’s elected president. And that has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this global war on terror.”
And thus the politics of fear continues.
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