Iowa Rep. Steve King Explains Exactly How Republicans Feel About Hispanics – They Are Drug Mules

Exactly How Does This Help the GOP Attract Hispanic Voters?

[Update:  Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor have both come out strong against Rep. King. They are to be congratulated, albeit a little late.]

A politician in a safe seat is often able to speak more truthfully about what he thinks and what his party stands for more than a politician who is more vulnerable or more subject to national attention.  Such is the case with Iowa Republican Representative Steve King, who tells everyone exactly what the party position is on Hispanics.

King says he didn’t make the remarks to incite controversy. | AP Photo
Of course not, what could be controversal about what he said in Republican circles?

King’s initial remarks came in an interview last week with Newsmax. While discussing the DREAM Act, which would allow children brought to the country illegally by their parents to qualify for citizenship, King said supporters were incorrectly depicting the children as valedictorians.

“For everyone 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,” King said. “Those people would be legalized with the same act.”

Given a chance to backtrack on what is surely some of the dumbest, cruelest and most insensitive remarks anyone has made during the debate on immigration, Mr. King passed.

Rep. Steve King is defending his remarks that drew criticism from his own party leadership that the children of some immigrants were being used as drug mules.

“It’s not something that I’m making up,” King told Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson. “This is real. We have people that are mules, that are drug mules, that are hauling drugs across the border and you can tell by their physical characteristics what they’ve been doing for months, going through the desert with 75 pounds of drugs on their back and if those who advocate for the DREAM Act, if they choose to characterize this about valedictorians, I gave them a different image that we need to be thinking about because we just simply can’t be passing legislation looking only at one component of what would be millions of people.”

And to be fair there was an almost unheard of actual criticism of Mr. King by a few of his party.  Here is what the leaders in the House said, and note that even Eric Cantor was apparently offended, and it is almost impossible for any conservative position to offend Eric Cantor.

“There can be honest disagreements about policy without using hateful language,” Boehner said in his statement. “Everyone needs to remember that.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the second-ranking House Republican, said of King’s remarks: ”I strongly disagree with his characterization of the children of immigrants and find the comments inexcusable.” Cantor is working on a bill that would legalize young undocumented immigrants.

But this is all the leadership of the House will do, after all, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor are not going to continue to condemn someone who speaks for the large majority of the Republicans are they?