This is great:
Talking to David Gregory on NBC’s Meet The press, King argued that immigration reform would entail granting citizenship to “a lot of people…up to the age of 35″ who smuggled drugs over the Mexican border. Navarro hit back hard, telling King he needed to “get therapy” for his bigoted views about Latinos:
KING: This proposes to legalize a lot of people that will include the people who are drug smugglers up to the age of 35. You cannot do a background check on people that don’t have a legal existence in their home country…
NAVARRO: First of all, I think Congressman King should get some therapy for his melon fixation. I think there might be medication for that. I think he’s a mediocre congressman with no legislative record and the only time he makes national press is when he comes out and says something offensive about the undocumented or Hispanics.… There are other voices who are the adults in the room and who are working hard towards a reform. and I think it’s going to happen. I’m more optimistic than most.
If you watch the video at the link, you can tell how pissed she is and has been waiting for a while to say this to him. Although I am left wondering why the hell Navarro is a Republican.
In other news, Dana Rohrabacher has decided going after minorities is passé and wants to instead go after the poors.
C.J.
Democrats in disarray! Wait.
burnspbesq
The demographics of Rohrbacher’s district are changing, and he’s changing his tune to match.
aimai
Yup, click the link because the best is yet to come:
Hunter Gathers
Free Market Jeebus appeared to her in a vision, setting her upon the path of being surrounded by big phat stacks of munee supplied by the type of people who think Steve King is the shiznit.
? Martin
Rohrabacher has a lot more latinos in his district now. He’s just trying to cover up his bigotry.
ruemara
She wants money, power and access without any icky gays, poors, or sluts messing things up. That’s why there are black republicans too. Plus a massive dose of the ego.
MattF
I’m guessing Navarro is an unusual Republican. Like that business about how members of Congress ought to have ‘legislative accomplishments’. Who ever gave her that idea?
MakeMeAnOffer
Excellent exchange. King is a national embarrassment. I guess the GOP wants to keep losing elections with douchenozzle troglodytes like King representing them on national TV.
As for the equally worthless Rohrabacher, has his lazy, terrorist-slurping ass ever been made to answer for his backing of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden for much of his career? Of course after 9/11 he changed his tune, but right up until then, he was still promoting the Taliban as agents of peace and stability. And of course the media lets him get away with it.
PeakVT
Geier wrote a piece on the Repukes going after SNAP via “undeserving” poor whites yesterday.
MattF
@PeakVT: Hmm. Anti-hipster. I could almost, y’know, sympathize with that.
scav
Parse and or analyze that.
a) did he only speak of drug smugglers? well?
b) “If Ana understands the language” that is to imply, no hispanics do etc etc etc
c) “I didn’t insult her or other Republicans”. part a of which is probably untrue as he just finished a distinct personal swipe while part b is likely true as it in general implies that Republicans are the only people he didn’t want to offend.
Man’s a trash-compactor of snide hatred.
reflectionephemeral
@aimai: “If Ana understands the launguage, she should know that.” What a charming way to clear away accusations of animus toward Hispanics.
The CW is that Democrats were too extreme in like the 1970s. I’m not old enough to remember, but it’s hard for me to believe that Dems were anywhere near as nasty and insane as today’s GOP.
raven
Speaking of Hispanic outreach, RIP Eydie Gormé
raven
Speaking of Hispanic outreach, RIP Eydie Gormé
burnspbesq
@MattF:
Which is why targeting hipsters as the “face” of SNAP makes so much sense: they are universally reviled.
gnomedad
In a related development, Santorum has a lucid moment. I doubt he’ll get RINOed for it, but who knows?
jheartney
My favorite thing about the clip was the way that neither King nor Navarro paid any attention to Gregory’s inane process questions.
cathyx
This kind of talk should not be dissuaded, in fact it should be encouraged. And then it should be shown on Univision. That will help the democrats.
PeakVT
@MattF: It’s tempting, and that’s why he was the focus of the Fox report. It’s also dishonest, of course, because he’s atypical.
burnspbesq
@reflectionephemeral:
We weren’t nasty (except to each other), and insane is a little strong. However, the self-described “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” was as delusional then as it is today.
raven
@burnspbesq: The left and Democrats weren’t the same thing in my orbit.
burnspbesq
You’re all about to die.
http://thebarkpost.com/dog-gifs-so-cute-they-might-kill-you/
Davis X. Machina
@ruemara: The line on the right is shorter.
MattF
@burnspbesq: Darwin was right, as ever. Proves that natural selection has produced puppies that humans want to bond with.
burnspbesq
@raven:
Maybe my experience was geo-specific, but the affluent, lily-white bedroom suburbs that comprised the Congressional district I grew up in (which is now represented by the odious wingnut Scott Garrett) reacted to Watergate by electing a guy that even the McGovernites thought was too far left.
Andy Maguire held the seat for three terms, before the district returned to equilibrium and elected local mom turned policy wonk Marge Roukema (who remains the only Republican I’ve ever voted for).
Roger Moore
@MattF:
It’s a great throw-away line, but don’t expect her to be consistent about using it. The only reason it came up is because it was a convenient excuse to criticize King.
FlipYrWhig
Didn’t King pull the same “understand the language” gambit while being interviewed by Jorge Ramos?
Sly
And it should be at this point that everyone within earshot of Steve King started wondering how a man who evidently has the intelligence to dress himself could say something this obtuse.
Emerald
@gnomedad:
Santorum really is a devout Catholic. He has a new Pope who’s putting a whole lotta emphasis on helping the poors. Maybe Santorum is listening.
(I’d like to see his reaction to the Pope saying “Who am I to judge” the gay priests, though)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@reflectionephemeral: The CW is that Democrats were too extreme in like the 1970s. I’m not old enough to remember, but it’s hard for me to believe that Dems were anywhere near as nasty and insane as today’s GOP.
The Dems no, that was the period of Jimmy Carter. But they were plenty of “liberals” in the media who were that obnoxious to anyone who disagreed with them.
joel hanes
[Steve King is] a mediocre congressman
This is far too kind to King, who is a blight upon the nation and on Iowa. Peddling hatred of The Other is one of his two modes; his second mode is peddling resentment of those who are apalled by his schtick (“elites”).
And yet the letters-to-the-editor page in my Iowa hometown gets a steady stream of “King may not say it in a politically correct way, but he’s right” letters, from people who have have never spoken to a Mexican immigrant, from people who live in towns that are 99% of northern European ancestry. They saw a brown family living in squalor once, and selection bias did the rest.
That is to say : King does a pretty good job of reflecting the opinions of his base. That he and the Republican Party have spent three decades purposely constructing that bigoted base should guarantee them places in Hell.
Tom Q
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It was actually a matter of the media (and much of America) identifying the whole Abbie Hoffman crowd as Democrats — or, at least, holding the Democrats responsible for all of them, despite the fact they weren’t truly connected, because they were “against the war”.
The difference with today’s GOP is, the equivalent crazies are elected members of Congress — even some in leadership positions. Yet it’s harder to get the press to identify them with mainstream Republicans than it was for them to identify the Yippies with the Dems.
joel hanes
The truly unforgiveable thing about Abbie Hoffman and Bobbie Seale and Tom Hayden did was to be absolutely right — the Viet Nam war was an unjustifiable murderous quagmire, America was founded on genocide and slavery and had not yet finished confronting or atoning for that past, the suburban middle class life would turn out to be a sterile trap, the Chicago Democratic machine of 1968 was an authoritarian blight on democracy, etc.
All those things were true, and that’s why all Very Serious People still revile the DFHs and will do nearly anything to avoid being counted among them.
AxelFoley
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
So, same as it ever was, huh?
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
And it truly endears him to his hispanic audience.
Sly
As for Rohrabacher, the etymology of white trash may be instructive.
The Political Omnivore
This is a good “where is the outrage” style incident (the meme that keeps re-appearing when someone says or does something stupid / offensive / horrible on Side-X and people elsewhere, who are not paying close attention, go “Where was the outrage from all the other good X’s.” Usually applied to Islam).
The fact is that Republicans simply can’t help themselves. For those elected by the tea-party it’s because they’re true believers. For those in gerrymandered districts it’s because they fear primary challengers.
At this point the ‘crazy’ may be locked in.
burnspbesq
@joel hanes:
No, the truly unforgivable thing they did is to place themselves so far outside the mainstream that it was impossible for them to be have any meaningful impact on political discourse. Being right is meaningless if you give people an excuse to not pay attention.
Tom Q
@burnspbesq: To put it in slightly different terms: they behaved like major assholes at all times, which made it easy to demonize them and anything they supported.
In A Prayer for Owen Meany, Irving has Owen — watching Hoffman on TV — scream (as he did all his dialogue) “WHO DOES THIS JERK THINK HE’S HELPING?”, which summed it up for me.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@joel hanes: I agree with your point, but I have to quibble with your use of the past tense in stating that “America was founded on genocide and slavery and had not yet finished confronting or atoning for that past.” America hasn’t finished because America has never started, and has no intention of doing so. Spend a few days at PIne Ridge or Rosebud reservations, and tell me what step America has ever fucking taken to “confront or atone” for its genocidal past. Hell, it isn’t even past. Just slower, now.
debbie
@efgoldman:
I was in high school back then, but I do remember Eugene McCarthy being perceived to be as much of a threat as the Weatherman.
debbie
@joel hanes:
Read enough world history, and you’ll find you can say that about practically every country that ever existed.
joel hanes
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
I have been to Pine Ridge, to Rosebud, to Red Lake, to Round Valley, to Cheyenne River, to Weitchpec, to Big Sandy Lake in Ontario …
and I agree with you.
As recently as the 1960s, the BLM felt empowerd to flood all the best and most habitable bits of Cheyenne River Reservation under the Oahe Reservoir, despite the objections of the people living there — being Natives, the people didn’t count. There’s a powerful picture of the signing of the bill to in Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert.
And the BIA continues to cheat the Natives of billions, not even counting the reparations for the Black Hills, which the Lakota are too proud to accept.
But in the America of my youth, you and I would not have been having this conversation, Natives would still be “Injuns” as in cowboys and injuns, Custer would still be a hero, Bury My Heart at Wounded Kneee not yet written. Some things, a few things, have changed for the better. Far too slowly.
joel hanes
@Tom Q:
they behaved like major assholes at all times
I wish to draw your attention to the stunning progress not made by gay rights before Stonewall, not made by black Americans before Freedom Riders and mass demonstrations.
Those hundreds of thousands of nice polite liberals who protested the beginning of the Iraq war sure changed things, didn’t they ?
joel hanes
@debbie:
Somehow Canada managed without the slavery and with less extirmination of Natives than did the US.
I suppose that the vast impenetrable forests helped, but I think the French endeavors in the New World were always less murderous in spirit.
Tom Q
@joel hanes: There’s some middle ground between the milquetoast liberals you seem to want to blame for everything and folks who were happy to tear down anything in pursuit of purity. I was part of the student uprising from the time I got to college (in 1969), but I never had much use for the camera-seeking anarchists; all they did was alienate people on the fence.
And, maybe you noticed: the long-term upshot of that era was about 20 years of GOP presidents, which did a lot to create the major economic inequality we’re trying to undo — not to mention putting the Supreme Court in the hands of conscienceless righties.
P.S.: You insult the memory of Martin Luther King when you compare the Civil Rights movement to the antics of Hoffman, Rubin etal. The Civil Rights movement was the model of how to move a society in a (to many) radical new direction. The Yippies were closer to the Watts rioters in tone and activity, and created similar negative impressions that hurt the left to this day.