Rep Steve King Removed From Committee Assignments
The Republican Leadership announced Monday night that Rep. Steve King (R, IA-4) would be stripped of all his committee assignments, including his prominent places on the Agriculture and Judicial committees.
House Republican leaders removed Representative Steve King of Iowa from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees on Monday night as 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 was denounced by an array of Republican leaders, though not President Trump. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, suggested Mr. King find “another line of work” and Senator Mitt Romney said he should quit. And the House Republicans, in an attempt to be proactive, stripped him of the committee seats in the face of multiple Democratic resolutions to censure Mr. King that are being introduced this week.
For his part King is claiming he was misunderstood, taken out of context, and is being treated unfairly.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6e7LYSXQJ0&w=560&h=315]
Which was his defnese to similar controvery in 2016. And in 2017, both covered by our own Vikram Bath. Oh, and he claimed the same in 2018 when The Weekly Standard reported on him thusly:
In the two-minute audio, King was bantering with a handful of supporters at the back of an Iowa restaurant during a campaign stop on Nov. 5. He talked about pheasant hunting and his “patented pheasant noodle soup” sprinkled with whole jalapeño peppers he had grown himself. Around the 1:20 mark, King joked that he’d have to get some “dirt from Mexico” to grow his next batch of peppers because they didn’t have enough bite.
“Trust me, it’s already on its way,” a supporter quipped, appearing to refer to the caravan of Central American migrants traveling from Mexico to the U.S.-Mexico border.
King engaged, saying: “Well, yeah, there’s plenty of dirt. It’s coming from the West Coast, too. And a lot of other places, besides. This is the most dirt we’ve ever seen.”The exchange, which appears to dehumanize immigrants, was recounted in an article by Weekly Standard assistant opinion editor Adam Rubenstein, who was covering the campaign event and has been critical of King. His story, published on Election Day, included a transcript of the conversation but not the audio.
King demanded The Weekly Standard release the tape, then scrambled and fell back on the same “out of context” excuse when they did just that and showed their reporting to be accurate. The problem with Steve King is Steve King. Apparently, even the Republican leadership aren’t buying Steve King’s excuses this time.
About time.
Awww, that’s terrible. My heart pumps purple piss for the man.
Now the people of Iowa who keep voting for him… WTF?Report
Not condoning Steve King in any way, shape, or form, but it turns out he was born in Storm Lake, IA where I went to grade school and junior high. When I lived there, the population was white, period. A large majority of the people there were descended from Northern Europeans recruited by the Great Northern Railway to be grain farmers in the 1880s. I am a standard Anglo-Saxon brown-haired light-brown-eyed guy; the Danish grandmother of one of my classmates described me as “dark”, and wasn’t talking about my personality. The largest private sector employer, the meat packing plant, paid a living wage. The canning factory, where work was seasonal, also paid pretty well.
Today the city population is >40% Hispanic, and another 10% from SE Asia. Much of that population is transient — there for a couple of years and then move. The public school system has more students fluent in Spanish than fluent in English. (The only private school in town is the small Roman Catholic school that was there when I lived there; I assume the sisters have had to tone down the physical discipline.) The leading employers are all ag-related and have Spanish-language requirements for hiring. I can sort of understand if any of my classmates who still live there feel like there’s been a slow-motion invasion.
Storm Lake is where King is pointing when he talks about what’s gone wrong in America.Report
Yeah, I’m familiar with his district. I had two uncles that settled in NW Iowa. Haven’t been out there in quite awhile but I remember it being about as white as skim milk.Report
As I understand your reporting, there are two trends here. Perhaps there are more, but the two I see are an influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants, and an erosion of living standards and infrastructure which is couple to the loss of manufacturing industry and jobs.
And in Steve King’s world, one implies the other. That’s the problem.
By contrast, I live in a state, (CA) not just a county, that has more Hispanics than white people. That state has the sixth largest economy in the world. My county, Santa Clara County, is not majority white either. And it’s the home of Silicon Valley. The workforce is somewhat transient, but it isn’t minimum wage, and there are plenty of people here for the long haul. Mostly they are people who like the cosmopolitan nature of the place. Not everything is rosy, but most think things are going well.
I do not want to gloss over the struggles of people in places like Storm Lake. I know it’s real. I have family in places like Storm Lake. It’s not until we get over this “blame the invasion” thing that we’re going to be able to tackle these problems, which are hard, and will take perhaps a generation or more to fully address.Report
I said the same thing on the Facebooks and my friends from Iowa were quick to point out that the blame belongs not with all Iowans but just with those living in the 4th.Report
The problem is that this is probably only happening because the GOP doesn’t have a majority anymore. It feels like too little, too late. Though someone on LGM speculated that the GOP asked him to resign and King’s response was “make me.”Report
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that ….. Oh, the hell with it. The cynicism is just too obvious.Report
I’m so terribly impressed that Republican leadership is finally acknowledging what has been glaringly obvious to the rest of us for just about forever. Real profiles in courage there.Report
Yeah, they do have a habit of ignoring reality until it bites them. I’m just waiting for them to announce they have now dealt with “Racism” in their ranks.Report