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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Now that we won’t have Michele Bachmann to kick around anymore, we will find out that Steve King is a more enjoyable person to denounce.
Bachmann was a bit erratic in her attacks as she never really had a pet issue. She just played the Tea Party playbook and used it to its fullest extent until the league figured her out and her relevance waned. To continue with the vague sports analogies, if Bachmann continued serving (with her potential ethical problems as well) she ran the risk of actually losing her seat.
Steve King however has been in Congress for a bit but for the most part has focused on one issue only and that’s immigration. Over the past few months as Congress continues to kinda, sorta, debate a long overdue immigration bill; King has amped his vitriol of some of America’s newest citizens. His latest attack ranks up there with one of his most disgusting.
When talking to NewsMax the Iowa Representative stated this regarding the so-called DREAMers.
“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.
Yes, he just compared recent high school graduates who have lived in the United States for their entire (if not most of their) lives to drug mules. Instead of apologizing King tried to rectify his statements in a non-inflammatory way. But he still sounds crass when he goes:
As much sympathy as I have for especially the valedictorians, but some of them are not capable of being valedictorians and they should have some of our sympathy, too. But as much sympathy as we have for them, we cannot sacrifice the rule of law. Our sympathy should not outweigh the rule of law, so we should not deconstruct America because the way that some of these kids have been characterized pulls at our heartstrings.
So if you aren’t a valedictorian, which by my count is all but one student at every high school in America; you are at risk of being used by cartels to smuggle 75 pounds of drugs into the country. As someone who ranked around 200th in my class (maybe even lower) out of 615, I am fearful that 614 of us will be drug smugglers.
But let’s look at Steve King and how hurtful his comments are. Its bathed in negative stereotypes that all Hispanic people are somehow connected to the drug cartels and instead of wanting to get “real jobs”, they resort to drug dealing. That’s the hurtful rhetoric that leads us to unjust policies that profile minorities such as the “War on Drugs” initiative.
For what its worth though, while King lives in a fairly rural district that is moderately Republican; his district is much more “blue” than Bachmann’s. His district also supports immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship. If King continues to lob cruise missiles at immigrants, then he could find himself in some electoral trouble as well.
His challenger is Jim Mowrer whose official site is here and his Twitter account is here, maybe give him a few bucks or at least tell people to check him out so we can promote his candidacy now as opposed to next summer when time is running out. If we are going to make any headway in districts like these, we have to start backing candidates when we still have time.