STEVE KING’S OUT-OF-TOUCH RANTINGS

Any politician who hangs around long enough is bound to experience the time-honored Washington ritual of being a late-night talk show punchline.  But few politicians have been the butt of a joke as frequently as Iowa’s own Steve King, who has an inappropriate remark for every occasion.  For convenience, we’ve divided them into four categories – extremist statements, delusions and ludicrous claims, slanders, and slanders against immigrants. 

King Lauded Joe McCarthy as American Hero. According to the American Prospect, “Congressman Steve King led a successful surprise move earlier this fall to block a Democratic measure naming a Berkeley post office after 94-year-old community activist Maudelle Shirek, whom King alleged had communist ties.  California Democrat Barbara Lee, who represents Berkeley, complained that King's move was ‘better suited to the era of Joe McCarthy,’ to which King responded with a hearty ‘thank you kindly!’  ‘If she studied her history,’ he said of Lee in an interview, ‘she'd recognize Joe McCarthy was a hero for America.’”

King Said Stem Cell Research Provides “False Hope.” According to Federal News, Steve King said, “Embryonic stem cell research provides false hope to millions of people that a cure for their disease is right around the corner, when in fact there are currently zero successful treatments in humans using this type of research.  However, taxpayers will now be forced to invest millions of dollars into unproven, morally controversial research, when these funds could be instead invested into non-controversial, scientifically proven stem cell research that is saving lives already."

King Opposed Anti-Dogfighting Law.  According to the Congressional Record, King justified his opposition to a measure banning dogfighting and cockfighting on the grounds that “The real foundation for it is the nature of dogs and roosters is that they do fight, whether they are hunting dogs or what they might be, and I don't support that and it doesn't happen in my district that I know.”

King Cited Pro-Life Stance as Reason to Oppose Anti-Dogfighting Law. According to the Congressional Record, Steve King said, “The issues that have been constitutionalized by our seated Supreme Court, one of those is the things that are decided to be a constitutional right that can be done to babies in the process of being born, struggling babies in the process of being born.  And if we can outlaw something like this and constitutionalize a behavior to people the way we do, I think it diminishes human life, and for that reason I will be opposing this bill.”

King Mocked S-CHIP Program, Revealed Inability to Spell. According to MSNBC, “While he upheld the minority veto of the expansion of SCHIP today, Congressman King said the acronym SCHIP stood for Socialized Clinton Style Hillary Care for Illegals and Their Parents.”

King Pushed Measure to Restrict Pelosi Travel. According to CBS News, “On June 21, 2007, King introduced an amendment to the $34 billion State and Foreign Operations bill to prohibit funds from being used to travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria.  According to a King spokesman, ‘The measure only applies to one position — the Speaker of the House,’ and the amendment was introduced specifically to restrict Speaker Nancy Pelosi's travels.  When asked why the measure did not apply to Republican House members who had also made trips to the countries in question, such as Eric Cantor, David Hobson, Darrell Issa, and Frank Wolf, King's spokesman replied that he was unsure whether that had been considered, or why it might not have been.”

King Compared Abu Ghraib Abuses to “Fraternity Hazing.” According to the Des Moines Register, “After viewing files on the detainees of Abu Ghraib, the U.S. military prison in Iraq, he said the images showed little more than ‘hazing.’”

King Called Every Iraq Mission “Successful.” According to one of his own press releases, Steve King said, “Although there are those in our country that want to see us fail in the war on terror, every single mission we’ve set out to do in Iraq has been successful.”

King Said Iraq Would Be Success Without Dissent. According to one of his own press releases, Steve King said, “If we all would have stood together, this war would've been over last year.”

King Claimed Iraq Was Safer Than Washington, D.C. In 2006, according to the Des Moines Register, "King said, ‘My wife lives here with me, and I can tell you… she’s at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington, D.C., than an average civilian in Iraq.’ King said that there were 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C., in 2003 while he calculated that there were 27.51 per 100,000 in Iraq as a whole.”

King Vastly Underestimated Iraq Civilian Deaths. According to www.IraqBodyCount.org, “It is also unclear where the 27.51 figure for Iraq [that King used] came from.  For a population of roughly 27 million people, that would be roughly 7,500 violent deaths per year.  For the year 2006, there were 24,500 civilian deaths reported in English-language media alone, and the United Nations reported more than 34,000 deaths from violence in that year based on data from morgues, hospitals, and municipal authorities.” [http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2007/]

King Said Terrorists Will “Dance in Streets” if Obama Elected. According to the Omaha World-Herald, “Steve King, R-Iowa, set off the latest firestorm when he said last week that terrorists would be dancing in the streets if Obama, a Democrat, wins the White House.  King, 58, said he bases that prediction on Obama's plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and on his middle name, Hussein.  ‘They danced in the streets Sept. 11, they'll dance in the streets if he's elected president,’ King said in an interview, referring to terrorist groups.”

King Equated Obama Election With Al Qaeda Victory. According to the Spencer, Iowa Daily Reporter, Steve King said about Barack Obama, “I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al Qaeda, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11, because they will declare victory in this war on terror.”

King Said Obama’s Middle Name “Does Matter.” According to The Hill, Steve King said about Barack Obama, “His middle name (Hussein) does matter. … It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world.  That has a special meaning to them.  They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name.  They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict."

King Implied That Veteran Reporter Thomas is Ugly. According to the Associated Press, “Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, was discussing the June 7 death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on Saturday when he mentioned 85-year-old Helen Thomas, who has covered the White House for nearly 50 years and is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.  ‘There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he's at,’ King said about al-Zarqawi, in a recording transcribed by Radio Iowa. ‘And if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas.’”

King Derided Work of Missionaries. According to the Congressional Record, Steve King said, “I would be willing to state also, Mr. Speaker, that of all of the missionaries that have ever gone to Africa or to anywhere in the world, and God love them for all the work they have done and it has been a lot of good work, free enterprise capitalism has done more for the world, more for the well-being of humanity than all of the missionaries that ever went anywhere from a standard-of-living standpoint, from a medical care standpoint.”

King Argued America Would Be Better Without Immigrants. In an editorial for the Des Moines Register, Steve King wrote, "What would that May 1st look like without illegal immigration?  There would be no one to smuggle across our southern border the heroin, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines that plague the United States, reducing the U.S. supply of meth that day by 80%.  The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day.  Another 13 Americans would survive who are otherwise killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals.  Our hospital emergency rooms would not be flooded with everything from gunshot wounds, to anchor babies, to imported diseases to hangnails, giving American citizens the day off from standing in line behind illegals.  Eight American children would not suffer the horror as a victim of a sex crime."

King Said Immigrants Engaged in Sexual Assault “Terrorist Attack.” According to the Wall Street Journal, “A September 2006 Wall Street Journal article reported that King was regularly claiming that illegal immigrants are perpetrating sex crimes against ‘eight little girls’ each day as part of a ‘slow-motion terrorist attack.’”

King Advocated Replacing Immigrants With Machines. According to the BBC’s The World Tonight program, “When asked if ‘the US economy simply couldn't function without’ the presence of illegal immigrants, King said that he rejected that position ‘categorically.’  He said ‘they,’ referring to the 77.5 million people between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five in the United States who are not part of the workforce, ‘could be put to work and we could invent machines to replace the rest.’”

King Said Amnesty Supporters Should Be “Punished.” According to the BBC’s The World Tonight program, “King said that ‘members of Congress that vote for a guest-worker plan ... will be supporting an amnesty plan and they should be branded with the scarlet letter 'A' and pay for that amnesty in the ballot box in November (when Congressional elections take place).’”