GOP Leadership Strips Rep. Steve King Of Committee Assignments

We wrote about the whole Steve King fiasco last week. You can catch up here. Long story short, he made some idiotic and gross remarks about white supremacy during an interview with the New York Times.

He was all, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive…Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

White supremacy IS offensive and stupid. So yeah– if you’re an actual white supremacist and are offended by being called one, TOO FREAKING BAD.

He later tried to “clarify” his remarks. He said he’s not a white supremacist and condemns those who are, but his “clarification” fell flat.

My statement on the New York Times article. pic.twitter.com/IjBHgZYgRD

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 10, 2019

Like I said, his explanation didn’t do any good. The GOP wants nothing to do with him. In fact, they removed him from committee assignments over those remarks.

House Republican leaders removed Representative Steve King of Iowa from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees on Monday night as party officials scrambled to appear tough on racism and contain damage from comments Mr. King made to The New York Times questioning why white supremacy is considered offensive.

The punishment came on a day when Mr. King was denounced by an array of Republican leaders, though not President Trump. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, suggested Mr. King find “another line of work” and Senator Mitt Romney said he should quit. And the House Republicans, in an attempt to be proactive, stripped him of the committee seats in the face of multiple Democratic resolutions to censure Mr. King that are being introduced this week.

Those measures would force Republicans to take a stand on the House Democratic majority’s attempt to publicly reprimand one of their own.

I obviously don’t know Steve King personally, but I don’t know any conservative who would casually wonder why white supremacy is considered “offensive” now. It’s a no-brainer. The left is constantly falsely accusing the majority of us of being racists, so it’s important for GOP leaders to reprimand and publicly disown people who make questionable remarks like that.

I know liberals are ginormous hypocrites. Look at the crap their side says day in and day out. But the reality is, we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

The GOP was right to reprimand King, unless of course his quote was completely mischaracterized by NYT. That’s what King is claiming. Here’s King’s follow-up explanation, via The Gateway Pundit:

One of my quotes in a New York Times story has been completely mischaracterized. Here’s the context I believe accurately reflects my statement.

In a 56 minute interview, we discussed the changing use of language in political discourse. We discussed the worn out label “racist” and my observation that other slanderous labels have been increasingly assigned to Conservatives by the Left, who injected into our current political dialog such terms as Nazi, Fascist, “ White Nationalist, White Supremacist,— Western Civilization, how did THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”…just to watch Western Civilization become a derogatory term in political discourse today. Clearly, I was only referencing Western Civilization classes. No one ever sat in a class listening to the merits of white nationalism and white supremacy.

When I used the word “THAT” it was in reference ONLY to Western Civilization and NOT to any previously stated evil ideology ALL of which I have denounced.

My record as a vocal advocate for Western Civilization is nearly as full as my record in defense of Freedom of Speech.

In other words, he’s claiming that he was referring to Western Civilization ALONE when he asked, “how did that language become offensive…” He wasn’t referring to white supremacy in that thought, he claims.

You be the judge…

h/t NYT