On Friday, I said that the GOP should kick Steve King out of their party. Specifically, I argued that they should take two steps if they’re serious about disassociating themselves from his open support of white nationalism and white supremacy. I said they should strip him of his committee assignments and deny him access to their caucus meetings.
Well, the rarest of things happened on Monday night. The Republican Steering Committee took my advice and had a meeting where they agreed to deny King assignments on the Judiciary, Agriculture, and Small Business committees that he served on in the last Congress. In this Congress, he will have no committee assignments, which assigns him to complete irrelevance and badly damages his prospects for reelection.
They deserve kudos for taking this step. Unfortunately, they didn’t take my second piece of advice.
The Republican Steering Committee unanimously decided Monday evening not to seat Iowa Rep. Steve King on any committees for the 116th Congress, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters.
Earlier in the day, McCarthy met with King and communicated his intention to recommend that action to the Steering Committee. After the panel met and agreed with McCarthy’s recommendation, the California Republican said he called King to inform him of Steering’s decision.
King will still be allowed to attend House Republican Conference meetings, McCarthy said.
It’s unclear why King will still be allowed to attend meetings of the Republican caucus. Of my two recommendations, stripping him of his committee assignments was clearly the harsher measure, but by not taking the second step, the GOP is failing to clearly disassociate themselves from King. He’s still clearly a member of their caucus.
They accomplished one thing. You won’t be seeing Rep. King on CSPAN during high profile committee hearings. Since he’s no longer on the Judiciary Committee, he won’t be a presence during any impeachment hearings, for example. That solves the optics problem where it counts most.
But we can still point to the fact that they seem comfortable enough with his white supremacy to keep him in their caucus and to invite him to their strategy sessions. In my book, that’s a big failure. It’s a political failure and a moral failure.
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This wasn’t about morals. It was about expediency. C’mon, we’re talking about Republicans. What did you expect?
We are almost to the point where the treasonous party who is treacherous and treasonous has treacherous and treasonous connections to the country which is known for its traitors and spies.
At that moment, it might be prudent to not have a treacherous and treasonous traitor in your party.
I can already hear the counterarguments: He was duly elected and reëlected; this is “the PC police;” He’s just saying what everybody already knows; etc.
At a time where Iowa soy bean farmers are suffering mightily from Trump’s tariff war and becoming louder by the day in their condemnation of being used as pawns, to have one of their Rep’s be stripped of his position on the Ag committee is going to be a huge impact.
No doubt they are going to ask for him to step down and if not then he’s going to be kicked to the streets.
From your mouth to God’s ears.
I hope.
AG
In their eyes not a failure, a feature.
Seems to me what they’re doing is setting up Feenstra to win the nomination in 2020, in order to prevent another Scholten from taking the seat, yes?
In my opinion, they’d deserve kudos if they “demoted” King for the right reasons, but let’s not pretend.
It seems that their hope is that stripping him of his committees will force him to resign, rather than them actually taking the next step.
See where they are in a week.
Speaker Nancy was about to formally sanction King. That is a vote the GOP did not want to take.
It’s basically an irrelevancy. As long as they were in the majority they wanted King’s vote. Now that they are in the minority and condemned to irrelevance for the next 2 years they suddenly take action.
It’s not as if King hasn’t said and done racist things in the past either. He hasn’t changed. He’s been the same for all his life.
He is simply being punished for breaking the unwritten rule. You don’t SAY THESE THINGS OUT LOUD in the media. You say them quietly to your donors and other right wing cretins in private meetings where you make sure all cell phones are banned so that no video of you being a white nationalist bigot can emerge on Youtube and embarrass the party.
If it was 2017, nothing would have happened. They would have rallied around him and Trump would have said “he’s a good person.”
They haven’t changed their stripes. They just have to be slightly more discrete post 2018 election. Unless they manage to seize power again in 2020. Then he’ll be right back in good standing and get all his committee assignments back.
He won’t be rehabilitated either. If they can seize power, they just won’t have to care what any critics say, that’s all. If not, then he stays in the dog-house a little longer.
But, everybody in his district knew he was a bigot and voted for him anyway. Because they are all bigots too. So, what’s to prevent them electing another cretin just like him, but more discrete?
Sorry if it is or seems pedantic, but you used “discrete” twice where I assume you meant “discreet.” I wouldn’t have said anything were it not for the repetition.
. . . cretin to be both?
I see what you did there. Nicely done!
. . . nobody gets it when I wrote that. Gratifying that one person did, anyway.
Meh.
If the vote had been different this past November, these same racist schmucks would’ve shrugged their shoulders and gone: nanny nanny boo boo, we don’t give a sh*t what wonderful, fabulous, great politician Steve King says. And BTW, you effen LibTards are the REAL racists anyway.
The Republicans only “care” because the mood of the country has, at this moment, shifted enough to cause them to “worry” about their chances in 2020.
That’s it.
Otherwise, they’re all super FINE with what King said in his out loud voice because they ALL feel exactly the same way.
Republicans have done nothing to be proud of or to be praised for, even though the VERY LITTLE that they did may have some benefits for the rest of this country.
The GOP won’t help itself with their base with this move, but I don’t think they will convince many erstwhile republican voters, namely, white suburbanites, who have been turned off by them on race, by taking steps to “distance themselves” from King while keeping him around. That is because what has set them off is not King, but Trump, and the same congressmen/women who have suddenly achieved “moral clarity” on race will appear as moral cowards or racists themselves as long as they allow Trump to continue to throw out racial slurs and insults almost as he breathes. They’re only fooling themselves.
King has been making comments like the one that supposedly set these phonies off, and even worse, for years now. Trump ran his campaign and now his administration on racism so ugly David Duke, Proud Boys and white supremacists just love him. The GOP itself has a long tradition of running on race, which is why these racist urchins are attracted to the GOP in the first place.
If the GOP truly wants props for moral clarity on race, and I don’t believe they do, let them find the courage to start at the top with Trump.
. . . Half-measure unconvincing as repudiation of King’s blatant racism, but will still alienate The Deplorables of The Base.