Steve King finally gets his closeup. Thanks Keith.
Go simpler, like Michelle Bachmann's only rival for least stable member of the House of Representatives did. Steve King (R-Iowa) Fifth District, but 17th century. Warming up a crowd at a high school in Sioux City for Governor Palin on Saturday, King, who amazingly is still let out of the house each day without adult supervision, said of the Obama candidacy:
"When you take a lurch to the left you end up in a totalitarian dictatorship. There's no freedom to the left. It's always to our side of the aisle. We choose freedom and liberty."
Presumably that's why the congressman's party was good enough to torture prisoners, eavesdrop on Americans, suspend habeas corpus, demonize dissent, paying news organizations to run favorable stories, and generally come as close to a totalitarian dictatorship as any American president ever has. To choose freedom and liberty--for Congressman King and invited guests--not for the country."
King is Michelle Bachmann's friend and political soulmate. He is notorious in Iowa for saying things that make our heads explode. But he has mostly evaded the kind of attention that catapulted Bachmann into worst person status. He is every bit her equal in bigoted wingnutty weirdness.
Let's go to the tape, (beginning at two minutes in): Update [2008-10-28 23:16:26 by 2laneIA]: Until I can fix the embed, here's a link.
Keith has this just right. For more of King's choice comments you could not find more jawdroppingly offensive remarks than these reported in Iowa's Audubon County News.
We put a lot of energy and resources into our children to raise them in the American way and in our Christian faith and teach them values based on these. Obama's upbringing involves his father returning to his first wife after Barrack's birth and becoming a polygamist. His step-father was also a polygamist. He eventually wound up living with his grandparents in Hawaii who were strong leftists. He also writes about his fondness for his Uncle Frank who is a Marxist intellectual. His mother went to The Little Red Church on the Hill in Seattle, a self-proclaimed atheist church where it was said, 'They raise red-diaper babies,' babies that were raised to be left wing hard core atheists.
Or what he said in this video.
Rob Hubler is trying to retire Steve King with an aggressive grassroots campaign, which King has grandly ignored for months, refusing to debate. Iowa's Fifth District is old-fashioned conservative, not wingnut central. It looks as though Rob's message of service and common sense is resonating, because word is that King is suddenly making emergency buys of air time. Rob has gone from longshot to contender, and King is scrambling.
If you want to help Rob put this whackjob away, kick in a few bucks to the Steve King Retirement Fund, and replace a far-right loon with a true progressive. Rob is a Navy veteran and a retired Presbyterian minister whose life is a call to service, answered. He will not disappoint us.
Thanks, Keith. And thanks to Douglas Burns of the Iowa Independent who first reported what King said, and Desmoinesdem who wrote about King's deeply racist reference, in the same speech, to "branding" Barack Obama's forehead. Also to ThinkProgress , The Hill, the Politico, Andrew Sullivan, Howie Klein, and every decent person who helped to hold this crackpot accountable by shining a spotlight on what he said.
Accountability.