Steve King does it again

Rep. Steve King (R-Ia) has to go. His penchant for obnoxiously off-the-wall remarks is an embarrassment not only to the Republican party but to the House and to the state of Iowa. He is a liability to the conservative movement. When Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy) said yesterday that of King that "it's time for him to go," she was wrong in only one respect: it is long past the time he should have gone.

His most recent remark is unforgivable. But remember, this is the guy who was stripped of his committee assignments by the House Republican leadership for asking, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”

At the time, King defended himself by saying that he was only asking why the term "Western civilization" was offensive, not  "white nationalist" or "white supremacist." Perhaps. Nobody can look into the mind of another. But it's precisely for that reason that we have the spoken word. And whatever King may have meant, he said what he said.

Now, Rep. Cheney and Sen. Corey Booker and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand are quite reasonably upset because he's done it again. This time, I really don't think he did mean to say what he said. But he did say it:

What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left after that?

Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society? I know I can't certify that I'm not a part of a product of that...It's not the baby's fault for the sin of the father, or of the mother.

Inevitably, King's statement as being spun as misogynistic. The Des Moines Register reports this statement as crediting rape and incest for the existence of civilization. That is clearly not the point King was trying to make, and the last sentence of his statement is a very valid argument which ought not to be ignored or dismissed out of hand. But it is absolutely what King's words imply, even though I don't think that any reasonable and objective person would think that it was what he was trying to say. And all of us- most especially those in the public eye- are responsible not only for what we mean but for what we actually say.

I was born and raised in Chicago, and during the portion of my adulthood, I was an active opponent of the first Mayor Daley. I had myself a good laugh when the verbally maladroit mayor's press secretary, Earl Bush, exhorted reporters to "report what he means, not what he says." It just doesn't work that way. True, the press often goes overboard in playing up the rhetorical misadventures of people like Richard J. Daley or Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or Dan Quayle or Joe Biden or even Donald Trump, although the problems with what the latter says are at least as often matters of truth or substance than conventional gaffes. But words exist to communicate, and each of us is responsible for choosing words which communicate our thoughts accurately. True, some of us are better at it than others. But there comes a point at which a person has said, "But what I really meant to say was..."

We have enough trouble communicating when we choose our words well. One of the biggest problems our society faces- our polarized, atomized society, in which we get our information and form our opinions from the most part through interaction with people who share our backgrounds and values and attitudes and beliefs and see the views of those who disagree with us as caricatures of what they really are- is that we hear people we disagree with from the point of view of our own worldview and framework of ideas without really understanding theirs. Pro-life Americans face a strong temptation (to which many succumb) to see pro-choice Americans as callous fanatics who are unconcerned about the sanctity of human life and are hell-bent on devaluing it if it means advancing the feminist agenda. Pro-choice Americans are tempted to see pro-life Americans as misogynistic jerks- probably male- who just don't care about the serious problems women who become pregnant in difficult circumstances face.

Neither caricature is- for the most part- accurate; it would be possible for either side to find specimens of exactly the kind of insensitive clod they imagine everybody on the other side to be among those taking the viewpoint opposite of theirs, but they would be exceptions rather than the rule. For the most part, pro-choice folks are merely people who see the abortion dilemma primarily through the eyes of the woman facing a problem pregnancy, while pro-life folks take a broader, more comprehensive view that focuses on what our stance on abortion says about and how it impacts how we see the sanctity of human life in general.

I am pro-life. The only circumstance in which I can ethically justify abortion is when the mother's life is in danger. But that does not mean that I am insensitive to the dilemma of women who find themselves considering it. Mine is pretty much the position of attorney and Missouri Synod theologian John Warwick Montgomery, who, when asked in a debate on abortion what he would do if his own daughter became pregnant as a result of rape and wanted to get an abortion, said that he would seek out the most skilled available abortionist, drive her to the clinic, hold her hand during the procedure, if they let him, and to anything he could to support his daughter- except one thing.

He would not tell himself that he was doing the right thing.

It has been said that the difference between a debate and an argument is that a debate is about what is right, whereas an argument is about who is right. Too often our discussion of abortion (and many other issues) are arguments rather than debates. I think it would probably be going too far to say that nobody is really "pro-abortion" in the sense of seeing abortion as a good thing; I keep running into examples of the small band of fanatics who seem to see it exactly that way. But most pro-choice folks see abortion as a tragedy and echo Bill Clinton's goal of making it "safe, legal- and rare." On the other hand, most pro-life folks aren't out to force women to bear and raise children they aren't equipped to raise, whether financially, psychologically, or otherwise. They just don't think that the circumstances of one's conception ever merit capital punishment.

If that's what Steve King meant to say, that is what he should have said. King did the pro-life movement no favor with these thoroughly regrettable remarks. He's only made the gulf between the two sides wider and made it easier for those eager to do so to demonize the pro-life side.

I can't say I blame all those people in Washington and here in Iowa who are outraged. King was barely re-elected in 2018; he faces a rematch against Democrat J.D. Scholten in what stacks up as a tough year for Republicans. Before he even gets there, he faces a primary challenge from State Senator Randy Feenstra.

Republicans had better hope that Feenstra wins because I don't see Steve King surviving the next election.

King is a kind of micro-Trump. The longer the Republican party sticks with him, the harder it's going to be to disassociate itself from him. Just as most Republicans and conservatives who have embraced Trump gravely underestimate the long-term consequences for the Republican brand nationally, so Iowa Republicans ought to be concerned about the long-term consequences for the Republican brand in Iowa. And Steve King is just as toxic as Donald Trump is.