Stupid Politician Tricks--Iowa Republican Steve King Gets Political Brain Fog, Too

Paul Zannucci--In a Friday AP story, Republican Representative Steve King is quoted as saying that terrorists would be 'dancing in the streets' if Barack Obama were to win the presidency. He went on to clarify that his predictions were based on "Obama's pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein." The depth of this "out-of-the-box" analyses is breathtaking and should make the people of Iowa proud. I suppose that if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's middle name were Herbert we'd all feel a little better about Iran right now. At least, Rep. Steve King would. But I'm not sure how great Iran feels about Obama, regardless of the fact that his middle name is Islamic (never mind their history with the other guy named Hussein).

In a speech just a few days ago in Chicago, Obama refused to take force off the table in dealing with Iran. According to Dave Newbart, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times:

Obama said global leaders must do whatever it takes to stop Iran from enriching uranium and acquiring nuclear weapons. He called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "reckless, irresponsible and inattentive" to the day-to-day needs of the Iranian people...the Iranian "regime is a threat to all of us."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/281249,CST-NWS-OBAMA03.article

It is true that Obama wants a quick and orderly withdrawal from Iraq, turning the day-to-day defense over to the Iraqis (who should be about ready for it by now anyway), but his stance on Afghanistan is more "hard line" than Bush's. He has stated time and again that he feels we need more troops on the ground there. During a campaign push last summer, an AP article quoted him as saying:

"We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there," Obama said.

I don't have any idea how many civilians we're killing there. Personally, one is too many, though I know that war, by its nature, is an ugly thing. I know also that Barack's political opponents have turned this statement into a heartless indictment of our service men and women overseas. But looking beyond that, Afghanistan and the mountainous border with Pakistan have not gotten near enough attention. If you presuppose a necessity for armed conflict against Muslim extremists, then these are the two areas that should be drawing the most attention.

In the end, such oafish attempts at reminding the constituency of security threats can only harm the party. There is nothing to be gained in making comments that can be labeled so easily "typical fear mongering." The list of genuine things you can criticise Obama on (from a conservative standpoint) is nearly encyclopedic. He is the prototypical hard left liberal, so why take the easy way out? Why start tossing out lines from a wadded up "talking points" memo you found in the pocket of last Winter's coat?

In the end, though, it's not Steve King's fault. After all, he only gets to vote for himself once in each election. Offhand and without checking, I'm sure his margin of victory was greater than that.

If you're interested in reading more ground-breaking thoughts from Steve King, you can visit his website here: http://www.house.gov/steveking/