Hasn’t Rep. Steve King (R-IA) gotten the memo yet?
While Republicans of all stripes are busy agreeing that the GOP must start doing better with the Latino vote and immigration reform, anti-immigrant Rep. King is—as Sen. Lindsey Graham would say—digging the hole deeper. King went on talk radio this week to claim that GOP efforts to reform their own party and make it more of a big tent are misguided, because Latino voters will always be more willing to support Democrats in exchange for government gifts.
As the Huffington Post quoted King:
Whatever we might say we are going to do, reduce the enforcement of the rule of law, waive the rule of law, Democrats will find a way to hand deliver citizenship papers along with a great big check from money borrowed from the Chinese.
King seems to not have learned anything from Mitt Romney’s recent shunning by the GOP, after the former presidential candidate made very similar comments during a post-election conference call. As Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) said against that way of thinking recently, “If we want people to like us, we have to like them first…you don’t start to like people by insulting them and saying their votes were bought. We are an aspirational party.”
We’ll see if King continues to define the GOP’s policy and politics on immigration. Sure looks like he still wants to be one of the loudest and ugliest voices out there.
