King stays King

It’s easy to hate Steve King. The congressman, who represents the district that most of The Grundy Register’s readership resides in, routinely makes incendiary comments aimed at minority groups for the sole purpose of grabbing headlines, inviting scorn and condemnation from national left-leaning outlets and strengthening his appeal with the voters back home who love him because he isn’t “politically correct.” But when the façade is peeled away, what is King other than a loud-mouthed, well-paid troll with little to no tangible effect on the legislative process?
           
When I heard about King’s latest comments and began planning to write a column about them, I thought of making treks to the places in Grundy County where people sit around and have coffee to see how they felt about him, but I had a realization—what’s the point? Since it happened, I’ve seen the story on national news and read about it in The New York Times and The Des Moines Register, but I haven’t heard a word one way or the other in Grundy County.
 
Was my goal to go out and make honest people look racist and/or ignorant? There are plenty of other arrogant, self-serving journalists who can take that job for me, and as sad as it is to say, most people, myself included, are just used to the congressman’s shtick by now. After all, he’s been doing it for 15 years, and as someone who spent most of my childhood in Buena Vista County (where King was born), he’s been my representative for approximately two-thirds of my life.
 
A look at King’s actual record on the congressional website, however, reveals a hodgepodge of milquetoast far-right legislative proposals that rarely make it out of committee: some of the most recent include “The English Language Unity Act of 2017,” “The National Right-to-Work Act,” a bill distributing taxpayer dollars for students to attend private schools and repealing nutrition standards, “The Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017,” and the “Protecting Life Until Natural Death Act.” He gets paid $174,000 a year to write bills that go nowhere and ensure that elected government does as little as possible, which is exactly what a conservative like King wants it to do.
 
He’ll never run for statewide or national office, because I’m sure he’s aware he’d get crushed. Even more moderate Republicans in the metro areas and the eastern part of the state would have a hard time voting for such a brazen ideologue. Simply put, King’s act just doesn’t play anywhere else, but as long as he stays inside the friendly confines of the fourth district, he’ll serve seven or eight more terms.
 
Kim Weaver will run another well-intentioned campaign as an honest, hard working moderate Democrat in 2018, and she’ll get trounced. A middle of the road Republican like Rick Bertrand may even primary him and brand him or herself a “problem solver” who “works for Iowans and not special interests,” only to be defeated by double digits. King and Donald Trump seem immune to “gaffes,” as they’ve learned the most important lesson of all in today’s fact-free, post-PC landscape: never apologize for anything you say. Just double down and blame the liberal media; it’s a guaranteed formula for success.
 
Is Steve King racist? Probably. Is that concerning as a resident of the area he represents? Yes. But he keeps getting re-elected, and the national media’s attempt to smear the entire fourth district, which comprises more territory than any other in Iowa and is home to almost 750,000 residents, as a racist cesspool is disingenuous at best and downright shameful at worst: as Trump has shown us, it’s entirely possible to vote for someone without agreeing with everything that they stand for. I don’t count myself as a supporter of King, but I can see why he gets re-elected—he’s an unwavering conservative who doesn’t back down from his principles, however misguided they may be, and throws red meat to his base at every opportunity in an overwhelmingly Republican district.
 
Trolls thrive on attention, and King’s tweets and public comments in support of other far-right politicians in Europe are going to cause more controversy in the future—you can rest assured that this will happen again. But if the Democrats have learned anything, shouldn’t it be that angry lecturing and crying wolf about racism to the point that an actual racist gets brushed off as simply “not being politically correct” does far more harm than good?