The House Republicans surprised me by actually asking concrete action against habitual racist Rep. Steve King of Iowa
Usually Republicans engage in empty platitudes when one of their fellow party members expresses racist views. But this is actually real action, if minor.
Let’s see if they go along with censure.
To recap, King recently wondered out loud why white supremacy and white nationalism should be considered bad things.
It says Minority Leader, not Speaker.
Dammit, let’s see if we can get that fixed.
Long, long overdue. He’s said many, many racist things, but here’s one that stands out: in October he endorsed an open white nationalist, who appeared on an alt-right podcast and repeated the infamous white supremacist 14 words.
I’m kinda trying to figure out the political calculus here from all sides. My read on it: https://twitter.com/ToymakerHypno/status/1084124784739434498
So the thing about Steve King.
Steve King has always been pretty racist. Like, he’s always said horrendously racist things. It’s just that they need a bit of parsing. It always offered some level of motivated deniability - people who didn’t want to see it could shut it out.
“We can’t repopulate our civilization with someone else’s babies” - to anyone familiar with the great replacement conspiracy, it’s about as racist as asking why we don’t do public lynchings any more. But you need to make that context clear.
And while I’m 100% sure that King’s friends in congress know full well what that context is, it’s beneficial for them to ignore it, because their constituents don’t. Isn’t that right, @tedcruz?
But “Why is white supremacy a dirty word”? Jesus, you can’t hide that. There’s no deniability, try as hard as you like.
So the question isn’t “why did it take you so long to turn on the obvious nazi” but rather “why did the figleafed nazi think he could make it this obvious?”
And I worry that says some bad things about where America is. Here’s a nazi who isn’t afraid that being a nazi will hurt his chances of reelection. Yikes.
If we cannot, as a society, band together to remove the guy who is openly a white supremacist from congress… Fuck, man.
That’s really gonna be bad.
A dollar short and a decade late. He’s been like this for eons.
Gotcha covered. No worries.
Republicans, especially House Republicans, may have noticed that the room looks a lot different since the last election. Maybe it’s s l o w l y dawning on them that racism is costing them.
I don’t think so.
They just like the use of racist appeals to have some elements of deniability, even if those elements strain credulity. He has gone so far beyond that deniability point so often that even they realize it.
I think it’s elements of both. King was a little too obvious this time, and shot his mouth off just when the composition of the House took a dramatic shift away from old white men. The Republicans in the House had to do something or disappear completely from the legislative process.
Isn’t this the demographic problem that’s been obvious for a few decades, though? Having a motivated base of older white voters is ok for a while. But the problem begins to pile up when the percentage of non-white and younger voters begins to climb. With women breaking away from Republican circles an entrenched power base needs greater and greater non-democratic actions - gerrymandering, nerfing elected Democrats and so forth - as well as an ever greater engagement by their shrinking base to maintain their position.
They become like the Soviet military in the 80s; demanding a larger and larger share of the soviet economy to keep pace with the west until there was simply no more to give. The entire thing spiraled down. This is where the short term thinking about f republican leadership over the last forty years has led them: to having to embrace people like King to maintain their hold on power.
It can’t last. I’d like to think they know that and will adjust. I’d like to but I don’t know if they have the imagination for it or whether a new Conservative party with more inclusive ideals will replace them.
Well, kicking King off of committees is an adjustment. It’s not enough, and they may or may not follow it up with more adjustments, but it’s a start.
This is the exact same treatment the Democrats gave Jim Traficant. I think the political calculus is simple: I think top Republicans are pressuring King to either resign or be expelled from Congress just as Traficant was.
Republicans have got to realize that with King still a loose cannon, the Democratic campaign ads are going to write themselves. And, they’re going to be real tired of answering questions about endorsing King or previous support for him. There’s a very good chance that November 2020 could see Democratic wins for the President and Senate but there’s no reason for Republicans to give the Democrats more ammo because of a loony Congressman from Iowa.
Odd that this was a priority now that Paul Ryan is gone. Why wasn’t it a priority when Paul Ryan was the actual Speaker? It’s not as if Steve King, on 1-31-2018, said “Damn, now I can make America racist again!” No… he’s been saying the same shit for years.
I’m 99% sure that, 2 weeks into the new Congress, King already has a primary challenger.
Losing the Ag committee hurt. People work years to get on those things, and here King just fucked it all up for his state.
Note that he’s the only Republican elected to the House from Iowa. That’s got to be scaring reality into some of his party.
He’s off the committees, but he’s still in the party caucus, right?
Interesting take from RawStory:
Really kind of an obvious take; it’s not like he hasn’t consistently said shit that’s this bad (just slightly less blatant) in the recent past.
And yet, that seat is pretty safe Republican with a normal candidate, I don’t think it’ll be remotely competitive if King resigns or is expelled from Congress.