King Quotes

From time to time, Representative King will pop out a doosey. Here are a few...

Steve King Puts His Pride Before American Troops

• The National Guard has played a key and unprecedented role in the Iraq war, with Iowans being deployed for years at a time. A bipartisan group of Iowa lawmakers drafted a letter requesting that the chief of the National Guard Bureau be made a full member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, therefore giving voice to the Guard members at the national level. Congressman Steven Arnold King was the only Iowa lawmaker to refuse to sign the letter. Why? "Representative Braley and all Democrats in the Iowa delegation do not support the troops and their mission. We will not be led to victory by those who have declared defeat." In other words, Representative King would rather have our Iowa National Guard members continue to go unrepresented than let his signature rest next to that of a Democrat. Now THIS is the kind of cooperation, understanding and unity the nation needs!
  
  

King's Thoughts on Senator Barack Obama

• "I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name, whatever the religion of their father might have been." Said Congressman Steven Arnold King in a radio interview March 7th, just before he disparaged Senator Barack Obama's race, ethnicity, name and father's religion. He continued, "I'll just say this, that when you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected president of the United States, I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does this look like to the world of Islam?... And I will tell you that if he IS elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al Qaida and the radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11th." Specifically regarding Obama's middle name: "It does matter. His middle name does matter. It matters because they read meaning into that and the rest of the world, it has special meaning to them. They'll be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They'll be dancing in the streets because of who his father was ... So there are implications that have to do with who he is and the positions that he has taken ... There will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president and that has a chilling effect on how difficult it will be to ever win this global war on terror." Odd, isn't it, that middle names are so very important to a man apparently named after a famous American traitor? You can watch the interview here. You can see the AP story here, and you can see Congressman King defend his remarks on FOX News here.
  
  

• As you can see in the movie clip above, Mr. King actually constructed an anti-Mexican border wall on the House floor. Yes, that’s miniature barbed wire in his hands. He suggests that his son's contracting business could build the thing, and his neighbor could build the machinery that would create the foundation. Failing that, he says that Halliburton could build it. Really. He really wants the U.S. Government to give hundreds of millions of dollars to his son to build a wall.
  
  

Random Quotes from Steve King

• Congressman Steve King called Senator Joe McCarthy, whose interrogations of alleged Communists was condemned by the Senate, a “Hero for America” and called a peace and civil rights activist not “consistent of American values.”
  
  
• A transcript of King's comments made at a Republican fundraiser in Boulder's Conference Center showed he compared illegal immigrants to stray cats that wind up on people's porches. King said at first stray cats help by chasing mice, so people feed them. King added that the stray cats then have kittens, which are liked for their cuteness, but eventually the strays, fed by the people, end up getting lazy, just like illegal immigrants. King would not comment on what he said on that day. Sioux City Journal, 10-13-2006
  
  
• Mr. King said about the recently killed al-Zarqawi, "There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he's at. And if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas." Helen Thomas was an 85-year-old award-winning journalist at the time. Most Iowans don't insult old ladies. (The quote is from a recording transcribed by Radio Iowa at the 2006 Iowa Republican convention.) Sioux City Journal, 6-22-2006
  
  
• Representative King said that he "prayed that Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsberg fall madly in love with each other and elope to Cuba." Iowa Republican Convention, 6-17-2006
  
  
• "... My wife lives here with me, and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, she's at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C., than an average civilian in Iraq." Of course, King is completely wrong and is comparing apples and oranges -- the city of Baghdad has a murder rate about three times higher than the city of Washington D.C. June 6, 2006 on the floor of the House of Representatives
  
  
• Who needs the Constitution? "If we wanted to abolish the 9th Circuit [Court], for example, we could do that." King continued, "We could also cut the budget. We could prohibit the Justice Department from enforcing the orders of the court..." National Public Radio, March 2005
  
  
• On Terri Schaivo, the brain-dead Florida woman he wanted to "protect" from her husband, Mr. King did a bit of grandstanding for his right-wing extremist friends: "She lives on her own, unassisted by machines. She was not dying, not in a coma and would not be near the end of her life now if it weren't for the barbaric torture of taking away her food and water that her husband, the man who said vows to protect her in sickness and health, has sentenced her to." After her death, an autopsy confirmed she had massive irreversible brain damage and was blind. Hardly the scenario King portrayed: "lives on her own... not dying, not in a coma..."
  
  
• King referred to union organizers who sought employment at non-union employers as "economic weapons of mass destruction."
  
  
• Congressman King referred to the torture of Iraqi prisoners by their American captors as "What amounts to hazing." In King's worldview, frat-boy initiation antics are in the same league as beatings, mock killings, and "sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick," according to Major General Antonio M. Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. Way to go Steve!

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