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Commentators Respond: Steve King Accuses Most DREAMers of Hauling Marijuana

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We’ve collected some of our favorite tweets about Steve King’s latest comment; here are excerpts from our favorite news and blog commentators:

From Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: Steve King’s twisted immigration math

So, yeah, it’s a great idea for House Republicans to delay this process all the way into the fall: It will give foes of immigration reform like King plenty of time to put their thoughts on the matter out there for public consumption.

Sargent also gets a quote from Jorge Ramos responding to King’s comments:

The vast majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are being considered to be legalized are not criminals or terrorists. It is a huge mistake to represent the Hispanic and immigrant community that way. At the end, they will decide who is going to be the next president in 2016. I really can’t understand why some members of the Republican Party would want to criticize the Hispanic community that way.

There’s no question that the GOP has a huge immigrant problem. If it were only one Republican making comments like that, you could have argued it’s an isolated incident. But when you add that comment to others made by Joe Arpaio, Pete Wilson, Jan Brewer, then it becomes a huge problem for the party as a whole. There’s a perception that the party is not interested in getting the Hispanic vote and does not understand Latinos.

Ashley R. Parker at the New York Times: GOP Congressman’s remarks undermine party’s immigration efforts

An attempt on Tuesday by House Republicans to show that they were at least somewhat open to an overhaul of immigration laws was overshadowed by comments from Representative Steve King of Iowa, who said that some undocumented immigrants had “calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert”…

In an e-mail on Tuesday, Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, a left-leaning advocacy group, called the comments “disgusting” and “deplorable.”

And Representative Joe Garcia, Democrat of Florida, used his opening remarks at the committee hearing to call Mr. King’s language “offensive.”

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos: Steve King: For every valedictorian DREAMer, there’s another 100 ‘hauling 75 pounds of marijuana’

One question this raises is whether his behavior is so embarrassing to Republicans that it might actually make it harder for them to refuse to act on immigration reform without paying a serious political price … or whether statements like this merely serve to harden the antipathy of the GOP base towards immigrants.

The other question is a little less serious, but it has to be asked: How in the world did Steve King get the cantaloupe-calve image in his head, and why is he so obsessed with the imaginary physique of his imaginary drug-runners?

And Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic: Steve King Wants to Protect the Border from Cantaloupe-Sized Calves

Are you still self-conscious about your beach body? Rep. Steve King has a workout for you! It’s called the drug mule…

So, yes, that’s some pretty clear, unreconstructed ethnic stereotyping right there. But, what is it with the calves? “Hey illegal immigrants, Rep. King is onto you and your marijuana workouts,” National Journal‘s Niraj Chokshi tweets. The calf-thickening bales of weed call to mind a classic episode of MTV’s True Life, in which a young man named Luke cries because no matter how much he works out, he can’t get his calves to bulk up as much as he wants. He gets calf implants. Poor Luke could have been spared all that agony just by carrying marijuana across the border.

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