Sunday, March 16, 2008
Opinion

GOP slimes Obama; McCain no leader

McCain is failing miserably...

Pakistani activists march under a sign painted with “Death To Obama” following Sen. Barack Obama’s warning of possible U.S. strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas in August 2007.
CREDIT: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images
By Arianna Huffington

The rank and unrepentant racism of GOP Rep. Steve King has presented John McCain with his first test of leadership since securing the Republican nomination. And he's failing miserably.

Faced with King's vile and imbecilic assertion that "the optics" of a Barack Obama presidency would encourage "the radical Islamists”—and  that al-Qaida "will be dancing in the streets" if Obama wins—McCain had a spokesman tell Fox News that McCain "doesn't agree with King's comments," and offer the toothless bromide: "He intends to run a respectful race and keep it about the issues."

"Doesn't agree"? That's the strongest response he is willing to offer? Where is the unequivocal repudiation? Where is the insistence that terrorism is a real threat this country is facing and should not be toyed with for repugnant partisan attacks?

McCain's half-hearted tsk-tsking is all the more inadequate given King's assertion that voters "should be looking at" Obama's middle name because "there is an implication that the identity that (terrorists) would infer in that name is different in the rest of the world than it is in the United States. . . . Our enemies will view this differently, and I think that's something we should be looking at."

It's worth noting that this is not an isolated instance of King's saying despicable and idiotic things. Here is a rancid sampling of his previous claims to shame:

King said the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib amounted to little more than "hazing"; compared immigrants to "livestock" in proposing an electrified fence for the Southern border; refused to vote for an innocuous House resolution commending the Muslims on the Ramadan holiday; released a "report" baselessly claiming that undocumented immigrants have murdered more Americans than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002; praised Joe McCarthy as "a great American hero"; argued that the civilian violent death rate in Washington, D.C., is actually higher than it is in Iraq; was one of only 11 lawmakers to vote against emergency relief funds for Hurricane Katrina victims; and, after the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed, said derisively that Zarqawi was now at a place where there are 72 virgins who "probably all look like Helen Thomas."

This is the kind of inflammatory blather we have come to expect from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage. But this is a member of the United States Congress.

We saw the same fear-mongering approach in 2004, when other congressional Republicans tried to paint a John Kerry presidency as a boon to terrorists.

Like Orrin Hatch, who claimed that the terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry."

Or then-Speaker Denny Hastert, who said that al-Qaida would be more successful under a Kerry administration.

Rep. King has thrown an additional log on the fire: racial and religious bigotry. But straight-talking John McCain can muster no more than a once-removed "doesn't agree." This is leadership at its most pusillanimous.

When Democratic Rep. Pete Stark angrily responded to President Bush's veto of the SCHIP bill by suggesting that soldiers were being sent to Iraq "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement," Republicans reacted with outrage and put forth a resolution calling for his censure - and Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked his comments as "inappropriate."

King's comments are much, much worse than “inappropriate”—indeed they are in a loathsome league of their own. So where is the call for King's censure—or the condemnation from the leaders of his party?

The time has come for the public to demand more from our elected representatives, and for John McCain and the GOP hierarchy to do more - a lot more - than "not agree" with the un-American, hate-filled spews of Steve King. SP