He’s common as pig tracks, and happy as a pig in… muck. The Des Moines Register on their hometown hero’s current plans:
Iowa’s Steve King is expanding his footprint as a presidential kingmaker.
The conservative congressman with the fitting last name is launching his own annual multicandidate forum for presidential hopefuls…
The inaugural Iowa Freedom Summit will be in Des Moines on Saturday, Jan. 24, more than a year from the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. King’s co-host is Citizens United, a conservative organization best known for influencing campaign finance in this country.
Three Republicans who are seriously weighing 2016 presidential bids are already booked as headline speakers for the summit, which will have no cost to attend: Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.
Every Republican who’s thinking about a White House bid has been invited, King told the Register.
The kingmaker universe in Iowa is growing increasingly more crowded, with U.S. Sen.-elect Joni Ernst now on the scene, along with the forceful figures of U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley and newly re-elected Gov. Terry Branstad, who just engineered a wholesale takeover of the state party headquarters….
Presidential candidates have long courted King’s stamp of approval. He gave his blessing to Fred Thompson in the 2008 presidential cycle, although not until just a couple of weeks before the caucuses, blunting the effectiveness of the endorsement. In the 2012 cycle, he came close to endorsing Mitt Romney, but ended up holding off his praise for the former Massachusetts governor until after the caucuses.
King told the Register that he will endorse this cycle…
My cynical DFH interpretation: Rep. “calves the size of cantaloupes” King has now got some hardcore local competition for the dumb hateful xenophobe demographic, and he thinks he may have hoarded his endorsements a little too long during the Obama elections. So he’s advertising his services for the new cycle immediately, and simultaneously announcing his partnership with Citizens United, who (for this one event) will provide the free lunch…
Would it be wrong to pray for an outbreak of norovirus at the conference hotel?