Left Side of the Aisle #118 - Part 5

Clown Award: Rep. Steve King of Iowa

Now for the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

This week, the big red nose goes to Rep. Steve King of Iowa .

First, you need to be reminded of the DREAM Act, intended to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented young people living in the US. These would be people brought here as children by undocumented immigrants, who have grown up in the US, have gone - and go - to school in the US, identify as Americans, but who are not citizens and can't become citizens under current law unless they first leave the US and then apply for permission to immigrate back to the only land they've every known.

The DREAM Act has failed to pass, so the Obama administration - good for them - established a policy of refusing to deport people who would be covered by the bill, people now commonly called Dreamers, unless they committed a crime. Be thankful for small favors.

Well, last month, Steve King successfully pushed an amendment to end that policy and has already announced opposition to a yet-to-be-released bill from two other Republicans that would legalize Dreamers and allow them to stay in the United States. He's against a bill that hasn't even been proposed yet.

He followed that up by going on a Spanish-language outlet for an interview where his opposition to immigration law reform was of course brought up. The host asked him what he would do with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

King's answer was, quoting "It's not my responsibility." Pressed on it, he just repeated himself. "It isn't my responsibility to solve that problem." That is, those people brought it on themselves by coming here, dammit - even though, again, those covered by the DREAM Act came here as children. Who cares? Not Steve King. Whatever happens to them, whatever exploitation, whatever cruelty, whatever discrimination, is visited on them, well, he just doesn't give a damn.

He says it's all about the "rule of law" and how if we have "sympathy for the Dreamers," then we will have "destroyed the rule of law." Of course, if the DREAM Act was passed, it would be the law, but jackasses like Steve King are incapable of pursuing a line of thought that far.

By the way, in that same interview, despite all of his talk about "the rule of law," King avoided saying outright that he's in favor of deporting millions of people. So as long as he can talk about the rule of law as some philosophical principle, he's happy, but when it comes to the actual effect of actually enforcing that rule of law, well, apparently that's another problem that he has no responsibility to solve.

King topped all of this off in an interview with the right-wing fake news source Newsmax on July 18, where he declared that

For everyone [who would be covered by the DREAM Act] who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.

For every valedictorian Dreamer, there are 100 drug smugglers.

Steve King doesn't care about "the rule of law," even less does he care about what the rule of law is supposed to be for, which is supporting the rule of justice. Steve King just cares about being a bigoted xenophobe.

And bigoted xenophobes are by definition clowns.

Footnote: Few GOPpers go on Spanish-language media. But not, they claim, for lack of trying. According to a Congressional aide, "We are constantly looking to engage Hispanic media outlets on a variety of issues and will continue to do so" but they then called it "an unfortunate setback" that one host has criticized GOPpers on air.

To put that more directly, "we'd be glad to talk to them but they might be mean to us!" :sniffle: :whine:

What a bunch of whining crybabies.

Sources:
http://dreamact.info/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/steve-king-univision_n_3623695.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/steve-king-univision_n_3626086.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/steve-king-immigrants_n_3643879.html?ref=topbar
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/king-norquist-attacks-immigration/2013/07/18/id/515882