King's Racist Rant Rolls 'Round The World

(Commentary) -- Somewhere much warmer than this March in Steve King's Kiron, Iowa, Joseph McCarthy is all ear-to-ear smiles over the last few days work of his political descendent.

As a result of the globalization that McCarthy-worshipping Congressman Steve King cannot grasp, the Fifth District Republican's staggering racist comments about Barack Obama shot around the world, once again making western Iowa appear like a land that time left behind.

Thanks to King the world has a new geographic reference: Sioux City, the capital of yesterday.



Hundreds if not now thousands of news outlets -- from ABC News (national) to The Times Of India -- have reported King's overt racist attack on Obama in which the Iowa congressman refers to what he believes are the dangerous "optics" of an Obama presidency.

Here is King:

"I'll just say this that when you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- and I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?

"And I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the, the radical Islamists, the, the al-Qaida, and the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11….

"It does matter, his middle name does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world, it 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.

So there are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he's taken. If he were strong on national defense and said 'I'm going to go over there and we're going to fight and we're going to win, we'll come home with a victory,' that's different. But that's not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror."

We've known for years now that King is a passionate admirer of Joe McCarthy. Now it seems clear King is seeking to function as a sort of resurrected McCarthy, a man King once called a "hero for America."

While King's comments about Obama are spectaculary ignorant (remember King couldn't graduate from Northwest Missouri State University) they are consistent with earlier utterings.

Last month, King said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other "liberals" are opening a "back door" for terrorist attacks in the United States.

The Obama racist slam is but the latest Kingism. In July of 2006, King "designed" a wall for the border with Mexico and made sure to add an electrical element to shock immigrants like "livestock." He also compared illegal immigrants to stray cats at a GOP event in Crawford County in September 2006.

Since winning a GOP special convention battle in Denison in 2002 King has made so many bizarre statements that the Iowa Optometric Association should cut him a check for all the eye-rolling damage he’s caused with his commentary.

He has joked the Muslims hoping for virgins in paradise may find newswoman Helen Thomas there waiting for them instead and analogized prison abuse in Iraq to frat-row hazing and compared supporters of certain stem-cell research with Nazis and run around taking photos of war protesters and referenced unicorns when talking about lesbians (can we use the Patriot Act to see what movies King’s been watching lately?)