It hasn’t even been a month since the GOP reluctantly forced Iowa Rep. Steve King out of his committee assignments and sent him wandering into the congressional wastelands, where he busied himself by fundraising off the fact that he’s a racist. But now, King is back and asking ever-so-nicely to be reinstated to the appointments he feels were so unfairly taken away from him after his long history of being awful.
In a letter shared by King on Tuesday, 200 hundred “pro-family leaders” have requested Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy reinstate King to the House committees he’d been ignominiously—if very, very belatedly—dropped from in January, after publicly musing about how weird it is that phrases like “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization” are suddenly considered “offensive.”
Blaming the Republicans for believing “a liberal news organization famous for their bias” (it was the New York Times), the signatories insist that (emphasis theirs) :
Unlike North Korea, we in the United States are “innocent until proven guilty” and hold to the principals of Western Civilization, as Rep. King so admirably does. The foundational principals begin with the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. These are the principals to which Rep. King was referring and which he has championed for more than two decades of public service.
What “innocent until proven guilty” has to do with a direct quote from a man who hasn’t been charged with any crimes is beside the point. The letter’s objective is clear: put the Republican leadership on notice that any mild intolerance of King’s extreme intolerance will not be tolerated.
The seven-and-a-half pages of signatures that follows is a who’s who of anti-abortion and pro-MAGA ghouls, including a number of Republican National Committee members, Phyllis Schlafly devotees, and at least one Southern Poverty Law Center-certified extremist.
Just as a reminder, before King was given a mild slap on the wrist for his latest bout of unambiguous racism, the GOP was perfectly willing to give him a pass for declaring that “we can’t restore our civilization with someone else’s babies,” endorsing an overt white nationalist for Toronto mayor, declaring that European fascists “would be Republicans,” giving interviews with anti-Semitic publications, and proudly displaying a confederate flag on his desk.
Still, if nothing else, the letter King was so proud to share is a useful document in that it offers an unfiltered list of people and organizations who are not only fine with having a racist like King walk the halls of Congress, they think he should have as much power and authority as possible. As such, it’s a nice little reminder that no matter how abhorrent King and his ilk are, there’s always going to be those who are downright eager to claim him as one of their own and demand that the rest of us do the same.