5: 54 PM EDIT: And it looks like House Republicans are going to have to work even harder to distance themselves. A new report from American Bridge finds that on immigration, a majority of House Republicans have voted with Steve King almost 90% of the time. That’s a lot of ‘splaining to do.
Cantaloupes have been delivered, calves have been flashed, and both House GOP leadership and some of its most important members on immigration have made big shows of disowning Steve King’s recent comments about most DREAMers being drug runners with “calves the size of cantaloupes.”
It’s not surprising that some House Republicans have moved so swiftly to try to distance themselves from King, especially since they’ve all been following King’s lead on immigration. Last month, all of the House Republicans (save 6) voted with Steve King on an amendment he put forth to defund DACA and deport DREAMers, a move as extremist as anything he’s said.
And actions still speak louder than words. As several commentators have noted, it doesn’t matter what House GOPers say when there is such a damning record tying them directly to the vitriol of Steve King. As Jed Lewison at Daily Kos noted yesterday:
The bottom-line is that while Republicans are talking a good game about how bad King’s words were, when it comes to substance, they have yet to show any daylight between themselves and King. And, at the end of the day, the policy substance is what really matters. Boehner can criticize King’s rhetoric all he wants, but if Republicans vote in lockstep with King, then what meaningful difference is there between them and him?
If House Republicans really want to demonstrate that they do not endorse Steve King or his ideas, they’re going to have to prove it. They should come out in favor of immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship—the only reasonable solution for the 11 million and one that does not leave them in the shadows or with second-class status. At least nineteen Republican members of the House already have, some of them in deep-red districts. They understand that the answer to a question posed to Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) this week–“How do you solve a problem like Steve King?”–resembles Steve Benen‘s response:
If John Boehner and the House Republican leadership ignored Steve King’s demands and passed comprehensive immigration reform, the “problem” posed by the unhinged Iowan would, in fact, be solved.
Instead, King has been setting the GOP’s immigration agenda and acting as their spokesperson. And he isn’t finished with his rants. Yesterday, he was on the House floor talking about Jesus and Manifest Destiny. Today, he’s doing the right-wing radio circuit, with an appearance on Laura Ingraham this morning where he claimed that he has “personally caught undocumented drug mules with cantaloupe calves.” King is also scheduled to go on Bryan Fischer’s show, which should be a fun conversation considering that Fischer once ranted about the GOP’s attempts to reach out to Latino voters because Latinos are just Mexican “socialists” who come to “plunder” the US.
And no, King still hasn’t apologized for any of his comments.
As long as King keeps trash talking immigrants and House GOP leadership lets him run the show, individual House GOPers and the national party at large should prepare to be saddled with the full weight of King’s intolerance and what it means for their big-tent outreach, until he permanently drags the whole party off an electoral cliff.
